Abortion due to gender.

[flyingfish]

So you are saying that the personhood of someone with severe brain damage, who is born alive, is questionable.

You told me we don’t know they have minds, so I said therefore we don’t know they are persons. Why is that surprising to you? I must have said 20 times in this thread by now that I identify personhood with the presence of a mind.

Why not declare that people with Alzheimer’s are not persons. They are not self-aware. We know that for a fact. They don’t remember their rights or how to fight for them.

Persons with Alzheimer’s don’t have minds? I don’t know the disease well enough, I thought they lost memory, but still had a mind albeit damaged.

Would you tell the mother of a person with severe brain damage that you have to take another patient, because it is questionalbe whether her child is a person and you only have one bed?

If I only could save one, I would choose to save someone I definitely know is a person, yes. It’s an unfortunate situation, but I would have a much harder time telling the mother of a child who is definitely a person that her child must die so that someone who might not even have a mind can live.

Many moral dilemmas don’t have a good answer, and involve choosing the least bad option.

 

[flyingfish]

With all do respect, life or personhood, isn’t yours to define, thank goodness.
Using your your assessments of life…IMHO I’d have a hard time defining you as a human person.

As always, just my thoughts

So for you someone who disagrees with you is not a person?

 

[kimmielittle]

So for you someone who disagrees with you is not a person?

Not so

You made your assessment based on these three criteria.

Would you tell us that they are not human persons?

We don’t know if they think.

I have to wonder at your thinking…it certainly isn’t mainstream…who defines?

We don’t know if they are self aware.

How would I judge this? By your admission, it’s defined by you.

We don’t know if they are conscious of themselves as people.

Who defines?

Criteria that you embrace…can be used against you.

You do not find the person afflicted with any of these as a person…So I ask you…“So for you someone who disagrees with your perception of viability ] with you is not a person?”

I was using the same criteria

 

[JReducation]

You told me we don’t know they have minds, so I said therefore we don’t know they are persons. Why is that surprising to you? I must have said 20 times in this thread by now that I identify personhood with the presence of a mind.

Persons with Alzheimer’s don’t have minds? I don’t know the disease well enough, I thought they lost memory, but still had a mind albeit damaged.

If I only could save one, I would choose to save someone I definitely know is a person, yes. It’s an unfortunate situation, but I would have a much harder time telling the mother of a child who is definitely a person that her child must die so that someone who might not even have a mind can live.

Many moral dilemmas don’t have a good answer, and involve choosing the least bad option.

I’m sorry, but this definition of person is both arbitrary and morally wrong. It is a violation of human rights. The safest and surest way to protect everyone’s human rights is to agree that they are human persons from the moment of conception until natural death, regardless of their mental condition.

Fraternally,

Br.JR, OSF

 

[flyingfish]

I’m sorry, but this definition of person is both arbitrary and morally wrong. It is a violation of human rights. The safest and surest way to protect everyone’s human rights is to agree that they are human persons from the moment of conception until natural death, regardless of their mental condition.

Fraternally,

Br.JR, OSF

Prior to birth I think the situation is very different, because the fetus draws resources from the mother’s body which I don’t believe she is obligated to provide regardless of whether the fetus is a person.

After birth, you have to realize that sometimes you can’t protect everyone. This is the case in any situation where resources are limited.

If there was an epidemic, we might not have enough doctors or medicines or hospital beds to treat everyone. You would have to start making choices about who gets treatment and who doesn’t. In any disaster situation this would be the case.

How do you make these choices? These are fundamental questions. If you have a homeless guy and a nobel prize winning doctor suffering from the same injury, and you can only treat one, who do you treat?

 

[rwillenborg]

flying fish - have you taken courses in Embryology? If not, and if you are at a place in your life where you could, I suggest you do.
Your understanding of what a developing human is and is not and what such a person is and is not capable of is, I’m sorry to say, underdeveloped.
I’m not saying this to be rude, but your ‘science’ is just, well, off.
If you are not in a place to take an embryology course (who is, right?) then might I recommend a video my husband shows all his Bio 1010 students. It’s put out my national geographic. It’s in my office right now, so I can’t get the title, but it shows in 4-D imaging the development of a human person in utero and explains what is happening in his or her development. It’s a beautifully put together DVD - national Geographic certainly knows how to create beautiful images, and it’s very informative.

I’ve dissected pig fetuses, cat fetuses, dog fetuses, monkey fetuses and, sadly, human fetuses (died of natural causes). At no time did ANYONE to whom I submitted my papers say to me ‘How did you KNOW it was a human being?’ I mean, really, what was it going to be, a volkswagen? Sure, they were fetuses, but the word doesn’t tell you what a thing IS, it simply tells you a stage of growth. In the scientific community, everyone knows that when an egg and a sperm meet, they create a new human being. This isn’t rocket science. It’s just biology.

I do have to say I appreciate your honesty in all of this. There are really two points which make me pro-life.

1. Human life begins at conception.
2. All human life deserves basic rights, most importantly, the right to be alive.

What you will hear from MOST pro-choice people (including me until I started my graduate studies and became pro-life after dissecting my first fetus) is that they disagree with point number 1. They are either liars, or really that misinformed. A new human life begins at conception. You can watch the whole thing happen under a microscope. It’s a human. And it’s alive. Done and done. Still, most pro-choice people will say they disagree with that first point, when in fact they disagree with the second point.
The second point is not scientifically derived whatsoever. That’s a philosophical view. Obviously, many people throughout human history have disagreed with it and believed that certain people did not deserve the right to be alive. Science does not tell us who ‘deserves’ to be alive, only whether they are, in fact, alive.
Again, most pro-choicers will tell you they disagree with the first statement, when in fact, they are disagreeing with the second one. You can find this out by asking only a few key questions. By the end of the conversation they may concede that a developing embryo IS human and it IS alive, but it is certainly not equal to all other humans.
Not you, flying fish. You are very clear on the idea that you do not believe all human beings have equal rights. And for that, I thank you. At least you aren’t masquerading this philosophical view as a scientific one. I appreciate that.

 

[TheWatcher]

You survived his intent, probably because your mother loved you regardless of what the doctor said.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I’m sorry - I have a difficult time accepting ‘abortion suvivors’ unless the child managed to live through a botched abortion. I think its misleading.
It was the choice of the parents - and the parents choice was life for the unborn child. They were not threatened, in my mind, with an abortion. The option was simply presented (and perhaps unfortunately pressed) - but at no time did the doctor try to take matters into his own hands. At no time did the doctor tell the parents, ‘we’re going to abort this child’ without giving them a choice. It was the intent of the doctor, not to kill the child, but inform the patients of all the options.
In nature, many women suffer ‘spontaneous abortions’ (miscarriages) - some women don’t even realise they were pregnant! We, everyone of us on this board, were threatened by this happening. We are all abortion-survivors then.

 

[rwillenborg]

Prior to birth I think the situation is very different, because the fetus draws resources from the mother’s body which I don’t believe she is obligated to provide regardless of whether the fetus is a person.

After birth, you have to realize that sometimes you can’t protect everyone. This is the case in any situation where resources are limited.

If there was an epidemic, we might not have enough doctors or medicines or hospital beds to treat everyone. You would have to start making choices about who gets treatment and who doesn’t. In any disaster situation this would be the case.

How do you make these choices? These are fundamental questions. If you have a homeless guy and a nobel prize winning doctor suffering from the same injury, and you can only treat one, who do you treat?

I’m afraid I don’t understand your first point. Right now, YOU are drawing resources away from others. Right now, this very second. The food you eat could be sent to someone ‘more worthy’. The home you live in could be better used by someone else and the medical treatment you have received could have been used by someone who contributes more to society than you do.
So, why is it okay for you to still consume those resources when it is so easy to see that others would benefit more from them?

And by the way, I’ve met nobel prize winning doctors. They look homeless. Really. I don’t think I’ve met a single one who owns a suit, at least not one that cost more than a hundred bucks.
One doctor I know (no nobel prize, but still extremely well respected) was turned away at the border of Austria because, well, he looked homeless. He ended up washing up with, as he described it, ‘a cleanish puddle of rainwater’ so the authorities would let him in.
So, you asked the question of who would I treat first, I will give you the answer. Whoever gets to my door first. That’s who I treat. You will remove that variable and say they both arrived at the same time. Fine. I will treat whoever it is I think will respond better to the treatment. They’re equal in that respect, too? Hmmm…I would doubt that, I’ve NEVER seen two patients who respond equally well to any therapy. Who’s injury is worse? Who is more likely to survive without treatment? There are a hundred different questions you could run through in your mind to determine who you would give treatment to before you even thought ONCE about what job title the patient held.
I have NEVER among ALL of the doctors, PhDs and other people of science and medicine who I have met in my career EVER come across ANYONE who gave a rat’s what a person’s background, job, or history is.
Maybe I need to start hanging out with different people, eh?

 

[JReducation]

I’m sorry - I have a difficult time accepting ‘abortion suvivors’ unless the child managed to live through a botched abortion. I think its misleading.
It was the choice of the parents - and the parents choice was life for the unborn child. They were not threatened, in my mind, with an abortion. The option was simply presented (and perhaps unfortunately pressed) - but at no time did the doctor try to take matters into his own hands. At no time did the doctor tell the parents, ‘we’re going to abort this child’ without giving them a choice. It was the intent of the doctor, not to kill the child, but inform the patients of all the options.
In nature, many women suffer ‘spontaneous abortions’ (miscarriages) - some women don’t even realise they were pregnant! We, everyone of us on this board, were threatened by this happening. We are all abortion-survivors then.

No one said that it is an infallible point. You can disagree. I find it helpful in speaking and teaching people when we discuss the fact that there are members of the medical community who believe they can “market” abortion and presure people. This very common at Planned Parenthood. When a girl walks in for a pregnancy test, as soon as they do the test and it’s positive, the nest thing is to talk abortion. Those girls who get as far away as possible from them are saving their children and those children are the ones whom I refer to as abortion survivors.

But I’m not presenting the term. I’m presenting a fact. There is a strong movement out there to persuade women to abort. These movement lies and makes arguments based on laws that are immoral. Many of the members of this movement are either people who are going to make money from abortion or people who have had abortions and subconsciously need to appease their consciences by justifying it for others. This is sad. These people can be healed from their pain and can become a great support for others. I’ve seen it happen many times.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[JReducation]

Prior to birth I think the situation is very different, because the fetus draws resources from the mother’s body which I don’t believe she is obligated to provide regardless of whether the fetus is a person.

If that were true, find a rational explanation why God gave female mammals a uterus.

After birth, you have to realize that sometimes you can’t protect everyone. This is the case in any situation where resources are limited.

Ever hear of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Vincent de Paul, Bl. Mother Teresa? They all agreed that if you can’t feed all the poor, feed just one. If everyone feeds one poor person, very few will go hungry.

If there was an epidemic, we might not have enough doctors or medicines or hospital beds to treat everyone. You would have to start making choices about who gets treatment and who doesn’t. In any disaster situation this would be the case.

That’s called triage. Triage is based on who has the greatest chance of making it, not who is more person or more human or won some award or is disabled.

How do you make these choices? These are fundamental questions. If you have a homeless guy and a nobel prize winning doctor suffering from the same injury, and you can only treat one, who do you treat?

Read above.

What you are proposing is the same proposition made by Hitler. Let’s establish an abitrary definition of human person and find those who have said something that supports our definition.

Based on this method Hitler killed six-million Jews, over one-million disabled persons, no one knows how many gays and lesbians, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, and forcefully aborted hundreds of thousands of children, because they were going to be born less than human, according to his defintion, which some scientists supported.

Can you see the tragedy that we create and the social chaos, not to mention the violations against human rights, when we depart from what God has revealed? Is this what you want to be part of?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[flyingfish]

I’ve dissected pig fetuses, cat fetuses, dog fetuses, monkey fetuses and, sadly, human fetuses (died of natural causes). At no time did ANYONE to whom I submitted my papers say to me ‘How did you KNOW it was a human being?’ I mean, really, what was it going to be, a volkswagen? Sure, they were fetuses, but the word doesn’t tell you what a thing IS, it simply tells you a stage of growth. In the scientific community, everyone knows that when an egg and a sperm meet, they create a new human being. This isn’t rocket science. It’s just biology.

I agree with you, I certainly don’t think women get pregnant with volkswagens

I am not trying to argue that the fetus is not human, I’m describing the definition of personhood that I subscribe to. Human and person are not equivalent to me.

Since the topic of abortion is so emotionally charge, let’s move away from it and consider someone who has suffered severe brain damage and is now considered brain dead (but they are still alive, say they are being kept alive via a feeding tube). This is certainly still a human, but in my opinion because its brain can no longer generate a mind it is no longer a person and no longer has rights.

 

[flyingfish]

I’m afraid I don’t understand your first point. Right now, YOU are drawing resources away from others. Right now, this very second. The food you eat could be sent to someone ‘more worthy’. The home you live in could be better used by someone else and the medical treatment you have received could have been used by someone who contributes more to society than you do.
So, why is it okay for you to still consume those resources when it is so easy to see that others would benefit more from them?

If the time came when food was limited, and someone more worthy than I (say a nobel prize winning doctor) was also hungry I would fully expect those in charge of distributing food to put me behind the nobel prize winning doctor even if it meant I would starve.

Would I like it? No. Would I fight to be alive? Sure. But I would have no illusions about the kinds of choices society would make about my value vs. the value of a nobel prize winning doctor.

I guess you’re saying that since I have resources, I might as well be one of those in charge of distributing them and so should give them up to those more worthy than myself? Well, my own life is naturally more valuable to me than anyone else’s so I feel no such obligation.

I’m talking about the kinds of considerations that would be in the mind of the person or group of people in charge of distributing resources.

And I don’t think what I’m saying is so horribly inhuman, just look at what happened in America with the financial crisis. The big banks, AIG etc. all got bailed out because they are perceived as valuable to society and so get priority over the poor who might not have access to healthcare. If the poor die due to a lack of healthcare society doesn’t suffer that much, but the failure the big banks would have caused more damage. This kind of thing is evident in all human societies throughout history as well as all other animals that compete for resources. The strong tend to eat first.

They’re equal in that respect, too? Hmmm…I would doubt that

Maybe practically it would be hard to find completely equal people, but what if you did? What if they were equal in all respects except one was an accomplished scientist and the other was a bum? Would you really flip a coin as to whom to treat?

ALL of the doctors, PhDs and other people of science and medicine who I have met in my career EVER come across ANYONE who gave a rat’s what a person’s background, job, or history is.
Maybe I need to start hanging out with different people, eh?

You know, probably any individual would have a hard time deciding who lives and who dies. Making a choice based on who arrives first is definitely easier because it removes the control of the situation from the person.

This is why when you ask people questions like if you have 5 people on one side of the track and one person on the other do you pull a level to switch the train so that 1 dies and 5 live they will generally say yes. But when you ask them if they would push the one person onto the tracks so that the 5 live they will generally say no.

 

[flyingfish]

What you are proposing is the same proposition made by Hitler. Let’s establish an abitrary definition of human person and find those who have said something that supports our definition.

What is that internet law that in a sufficiently long discussion comparisons with the Nazis will be made?

Hitler exterminated people he didn’t like, if you think that this is what I’m suggesting then I would ask you to re-read my posts.

 

[JReducation]

I agree with you, I certainly don’t think women get pregnant with volkswagens

I am not trying to argue that the fetus is not human, I’m describing the definition of personhood that I subscribe to. Human and person are not equivalent to me.

Since the topic of abortion is so emotionally charge, let’s move away from it and consider someone who has suffered severe brain damage and is now considered brain dead (but they are still alive, say they are being kept alive via a feeding tube). This is certainly still a human, but **in my opinion **because its brain can no longer generate a mind it is no longer a person and no longer has rights.

The key phrase here is that this is a personal opinion. At some point we have to acknowledge the existence of a God and his rights and opinion.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[JReducation]

What is that internet law that in a sufficiently long discussion comparisons with the Nazis will be made?

Hitler exterminated people he didn’t like, if you think that this is what I’m suggesting then I would ask you to re-read my posts.

Hitler believed that the people he exterminated either through abortion or other means were not persons and had no rights. That’s the comparison that I’m making.

When we say that people are not persons and that they have not human rights, then we open the door for chaos, the destruction of innocent life, and a great deal of suffering. That’s the point that I’m making. I don’t care about the internet law. I care about the fact that those who have subscribed to these definitions of person have cause a great deal of harm. Therefore, the definition does not work. Were it revealed truth, it would have done good, not harm.

The other question that I posed to you is where does God enter into the picture for you? What about his opinion and his rights? I say this very respectfully. But these are fundamental questions that we have to answer.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[flyingfish]

The key phrase here is that this is a personal opinion. At some point we have to acknowledge the existence of a God and his rights and opinion.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

You know, I wonder about this. And every time what I come back to is that if there is a God, then it made a world where life on earth evolved through severe competition and predation. The entire course of evolution that ultimately led to us didn’t happen through self sacrifice. It happened through predators ripping apart and eating other organisms, with organisms themselves competing for resources even if it meant their fellow organisms died.

If there is a God, this is the kind of world it made.

(And I will say there is self sacrifice and kindness in the world as well, but the fundamental mechanism of evolution with organisms competing for limited resources, eating each other, and adapting to changing environmental conditions says something about the creator of this set up if one exists.)

 

[JReducation]

If we open our minds beyond what every scientific theory says, we can see God in a very different light. Yes, it is true that there is a food chain and God created it. It is not a violent system. It is a system that has kept the natural world balanced, until man started to mess with it. In other words, God created the universe and gave it its own laws. The universe obeys his will by complying with the laws that have been assigned to it.

Every event in the universe follows a law and every event reveals the power of God. And we cannot forget that every tragedy that occurs in the universe is a product of Original Sin. God creates the universe and everything in it. He creates it all to grow and develop in harmony. Man tries to be God and disrupts that harmony. He sets in motion the horrible effects of sin.
However, God is still in love with his prime creation, Man. He vests his Son in humanity. God the Father would not have vested God the Son in humanity had he believed that humanity has no inherent dignity. Here is where God shows his greatest mercy. He subjects himself to all of the dangers and vulnerabilities that come with being human.

Had the newly conceived child in Mary’s womb not been a real person, fully human, fully alive, he would not have been God. If nothing is impossible for God, then it is not impossible for persons to come into existence at the moment of conception, regardless of their stage in development. We know that there was a Jesus of Nazareth. World history changed over this man. We know that there was a resurrection; again, world history was changed over this faith. Even the calendar was changed. The claim that was made by the non-believers was that the Apostles stole the body. But the Romans argued that no one had entered or left the tomb while they guarded it. They could not understand how the body was stolen.

We have only one way to go here. We have to accept that God created Man and gave him dignity. It is his dignity that makes his life invaluable. When and how he becomes a person, does not take away from his dignity as a human being. To kill the newly conceived child is an unjust act. It violates the dignity of man. It violates the dignity of God. It denies the function of the human reproductive system, to bear life. No mother has the right to deny her child the use of her womb, for one simple reason. The womb was created for that purpose. Once the child is within the womb, it has a right to remain there. This is a natural law that we see in every species.

As Mother Teresa once said, “It is a crime that a mother should kill her unborn child for her convenience.” Or as Jesus would say, “The greatest act of love is to lay down your life for another.” If a woman can’t love enough to sacrifice nine months for her unborn child, why should anyone believe that she can love anyone at all?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[flyingfish]

And we cannot forget that every tragedy that occurs in the universe is a product of Original Sin.

This digresses from the topic quite a bit, but if you think about it, the very fact that original sin happened to begin with shows that human beings were made flawed before original sin came into the picture. If we weren’t fallen from the beginning, we wouldn’t have committed original sin, which kind of defeats the purpose of introducing the idea of original sin.

I also have trouble believing that before original sin wolves didn’t eat bunnies, parasites, bacteria, and viruses didn’t kill and maim, that people weren’t born with debilitating birth defects and so on on. You can definitely explain some evil away as the result of human choices, but there is plenty of it that has nothing to do with human choices. And for that matter, if you look at human tendency to violence, to war, to rape, to greed, those may well be biological desires. It would mean that God made us predisposed to enjoying violence, getting angry to the point of murdering others, etc. I think it would reflect on God, if God actually exists/had a choice in how we were made/if this is not the best possible world.

As Mother Teresa once said, “It is a crime that a mother should kill her unborn child for her convenience.” Or as Jesus would say, “The greatest act of love is to lay down your life for another.” If a woman can’t love enough to sacrifice nine months for her unborn child, why should anyone believe that she can love anyone at all?

And yet countless women who have had abortions are still capable of love. Just think about it, the vast majority of people are okay with abortion in at least some circumstances. Doesn’t it bother you that only 20% of Americans think that abortion should never be permitted? On a conscious or subconscious level, most of us seem to realize that the fetus is not a person and we don’t give it the right to life.

 

[JReducation]

Doesn’t it bother you that only 20% of Americans think that abortion should never be permitted? On a conscious or subconscious level, most of us seem to realize that the fetus is not a person and we don’t give it the right to life.

First of all, man was not created flawed. He was created free. He made a choice, a wrong one. The results are the tragedies that we see today. Sin disrupts the harmoney of the universe.

No it does not bother me that only 20% of Americans think that abortion should never be permitted, because it’s not true. The percentage is over 50%.

Second, even if only 1% believed it, right and morality are not determined by the majority. What is right and true is always right and true, regardless of how many believe it.

The Sun will not fall out of the sky even if everyone believes it. At the moment of conception the fertilized egg is endowed with a human soul that is imortal. That sould has a divine origin. Therefore it has a divine and human dignity.

I need you to answer a question for me. Why are you so insistent on protecting abortion?

Don’t give me some scientific nonsense of who said this or that. You sound like an intelligent person and we all know that there are as many scientific arguments as there are scientists.

I want to know why YOU gave up your belief in the dignity of human life?

If you don’t want to answer here, you can PM or email me.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[kimmielittle]

Just think about it, the vast majority of people are okay with abortion in at least some circumstances. Doesn’t it bother you that only 20% of Americans think that abortion should never be permitted? On a conscious or subconscious level, most of us seem to realize that the fetus is not a person and we don’t give it the right to life.

I think you are attempting to mislead with this statement. How about providing the source AND breakdown i.e.,how many say…to save the life of the mother ]