Abortion due to gender.

[flyingfish]

OK, my question only caused confusion. That’s probably my fault. I apologize. Let me put it another way.

My pro-life stance and that of hundreds of thousands, of others who work in this ministry is doing a lot more for the rights and health of women than the pro-choice movement. The pro-choice movement is very loud and very well spoken, but when the rubber hits the road, they have done very little for the well-being of women. These leaders do not roll up their sleeves and go out there and do something. They don’t pour millions of dollars into women’s programs, as does the pro-life movement.

The pro-choice movement has done nothing for the ilegal immigrant woman who is pregnant and cannot get medical care. The pro-life centers have offered the care without asking for her immigration status.

The pro-choice movement says that it’s ok to kill a baby who is inches away from being free of the womb or to throw a live baby into a bucket of water and drown him as a solution to a mother’s problem. The pro-life movement offers to find that baby parents and a home and to help the mother work through her problems.

That’s what I was trying to point out. I hope it’s clearer now.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I see what you’re saying. I mean, I don’t know how to respond. I haven’t ran the numbers on how much pro-choice folk donate to help women in ways other than fighting to preserve legal access to abortion. I don’t know how much having abortions helps women in general.

Liberal people in general support social programs like free universal healthcare, daycare, better education, higher minimum wage and are willing to pay higher taxes for these programs. I live in Canada, where we pay higher taxes than Americans but also provide Canadians with more social services. Europeans do more still. Canada is very pro-choice, we have no legal restrictions on abortion at all as far as I know.

Edit: Some statistics on abortion rates per 1000 women by country: data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=GenderStat&f=inID%3A12

United States of America 20.8
Canada 15.2

 

[flyingfish]

(emphasis mine)

You do realize that many workers for Planned Parenthood lie to their clients? That they tell the women at their centers lies about their babies to get them to have an abortion? Because you know, the more abortions they do the more money they get.

I’m not making that up. liveaction.org/

I’m not surprised that a business would do things to market its service. I don’t think it should be legal for them to outright lie, but as far as I know it’s true that an abortion is safer for a woman than going through with the pregnancy. Aren’t there laws that are supposed to prevent advertisers from outright lying to customers?

 

[JReducation]

I see what you’re saying. I mean, I don’t know how to respond. I haven’t ran the numbers on how much pro-choice folk donate to help women in ways other than fighting to preserve legal access to abortion. I don’t know how much having abortions helps women in general.

Liberal people in general support social programs like free universal healthcare, daycare, better education, higher minimum wage and are willing to pay higher taxes for these programs. I live in Canada, where we pay higher taxes than Americans but also provide Canadians with more social services. Europeans do more still. Canada is very pro-choice, we have no legal restrictions on abortion at all as far as I know.

No my friend, you cannot answer the question. The reason is that the pro-choice movement is only concerned with keeping abortion legal. They do nothing for people in crisis. Those services are provided by churches and other private organizations and sometimes the government will throw in a few dollars. But most of the money comes from the private sector through donations. And the services are provided for free or on sliding scales. They are provided by pro-life advocates.

You see, the mother’s life is as important to me as the life of the unborn child. I do not prefer the child over the mother. Neither does anyone who is pro-life. We try to rescue both. We do the best we can and settle for the natural results. There is the big difference between us and the pro-choice people. We do not find excuses or create definitions and criteria that never existed, in order to defend a life. We just face reality. There are two lives here. We need to do everything we can to help both. God, nature, Allah, Yahweh, whatever you want to call the supreme being, will determine the outcome. We just do our best to be fair to mother, father and child.

Yes, we even care for the fathers. You should come and visit my center or I should send you a copy of the education manual that I have written for fathers. It has turned many of them around and made them very excited about becoming a dad and the women have come back and said that they now feel that they have a partner. We can turn lives around without killing the unborn.

Are there women with health problems. Sometimes. But that’s not as frequent as the pro-choice movement wants us to think. Most women who get pregnant are younger and healthier than the older woman. Few older women get pregnant. Those are the high risk pregnancies. Those pregnancies can also be cared for and monitored very closely. We find doctors who can do it. The number of women who die in labor is less than the number of women who die from breast cancer, but we don’t do masectomies on every woman before she develops cancer.

You said that you can be wrong. I agree with you. You are wrong. I’m sorry for my bluntness. And you have a moral duty to put distance between you and the pro-choice idea if you know that you may be wrong. Because you may be promoting something immoral. You don’t want to wake up one morning and feel guilty for what you promoted and led others to believe.

Sometimes, if we believe that we can be wrong, it is better to take the most conservative route. Even if we make a mistake, it is usually less grave. I can’t return the life to an unborn child. But I can help him after he’s born, if I was wrong in letting him come into the world. Do you see what I’m saying?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[flyingfish]

You said that you can be wrong. I agree with you. You are wrong. I’m sorry for my bluntness. And you have a moral duty to put distance between you and the pro-choice idea if you know that you may be wrong. Because you may be promoting something immoral. You don’t want to wake up one morning and feel guilty for what you promoted and led others to believe.

Sometimes, if we believe that we can be wrong, it is better to take the most conservative route. Even if we make a mistake, it is usually less grave. I can’t return the life to an unborn child. But I can help him after he’s born, if I was wrong in letting him come into the world. Do you see what I’m saying?

I see your point, but I don’t agree with living life on the basis of “what if”. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’m wrong.

But as far as “what ifs” go, I think I would feel worse if I promoted the pro-life position and as a result some woman with a high risk pregnancy read it, decided not to have an abortion, and either died or suffered permanent health damage as a result.

Back when I was pro-life, I argued with my mother about abortion and I think I might have even showed her pictures of dead fetuses. Yep. Now that makes me feel really bad, because my mother actually had an abortion in her life. So today I apologized to my mom for having done that.

 

[JReducation]

I see your point, but I don’t agree with living life on the basis of “what if”. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’m wrong.

But as far as “what ifs” go, I think I would feel worse if I promoted the pro-life position and as a result some woman with a high risk pregnancy read it, decided not to have an abortion, and either died or suffered permanent health damage as a result.

Back when I was pro-life, I argued with my mother about abortion and I think I might have even showed her pictures of dead fetuses. Yep. Now that makes me feel really bad, because my mother actually had an abortion in her life. So today I apologized to my mom for having done that.

Your pain and maybe your mother’s too, I don’t know about her. But I can hear your own. Pain will not be healed by promoting abortion.

If you promote life, even if a mother dies or has health complications, that is not your fault. You did not kill her. Sometimes, things don’t work out. But at least you saved one life, that of the child. A mother with a serious health problem may die young anyway. We don’t know this for sure. But we know that if we stick a pair of scissors into the head of a baby, he will die. There is not doubt here. I’d rather take my chances with the mother coming out OK.

If you promote abortion, you are responsible for the death of the unborn. That child would have been born if we had defended his right to be born. The only reason that he died is that we did not stand up for him.

The person who is sick cannot always be saved. But the person who is growing in the womb stands a greater chance, if left alone and uninterrupted. If I put the health of the child and mother on a scale, the child has a greater chance than a mother who has a health problem.

As far as women developing health problems that result from childbirth, that is so rare. Women have been bearing children since Eve and surviving. In the past, those who died had complications that came from such things as bleeding, infections due to poor hygeine, or pre-existing conditions that were unknown.

Today, we can anticipate for all those possibilities and the chances of survival are increased by several hundred percent.

No my friend, we can’t use the health excuse to kill an unborn child. The mother will live as long as God wants her to live, unless we interfere with God’s plan and kill her too.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

As I told you before, I took my chances and I won. My wife and son both made it. We can’t guarrantee that people will or will not make it. We can only guess. Even medicine is not that precise.

 

[PaulinVA]

Planned Parenthood is a business, there’s more of them in those neighborhoods because there’s more demand for abortions there.

No, actually Planned Parenthood was created to foster the eugenic principles of Margret Sanger, who believed the poor, the feeble, the minorities, should not be allowed to reproduce.

 

[kimmielittle]

No, actually Planned Parenthood was created to foster the eugenic principles of Margret Sanger, who believed the poor, the feeble, the minorities, should not be allowed to reproduce.

Her… and Marie Stoples International

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I see your point, but I don’t agree with living life on the basis of “what if”. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’m wrong.

But as far as “what ifs” go, I think I would feel worse if I promoted the pro-life position and as a result some woman with a high risk pregnancy read it, decided not to have an abortion, and either died or suffered permanent health damage as a result.

Back when I was pro-life, I argued with my mother about abortion and I think I might have even showed her pictures of dead fetuses. Yep. Now that makes me feel really bad, because my mother actually had an abortion in her life. So today I apologized to my mom for having done that.

I don’t understand something…the pictures of the dead babies were for you somehow distasteful. But then you found out that your mom was post abortive…that changed your mind.

I bet your mother is a very nice person. But even very nice people can commit sin…I stayed in a perpetual state of mortal sin for about 17 years, yet most people thought I was a nice person.

Your mother committed a sin, and if she is Catholic, she needs to confess and be absolved. Just because she is your mom, doesn’t make it ok. When we love someone, we should love them unconditionally…but it does not make all their choices unconditionally right.

You have a sibling that you won’t get to know. I’ll pray for you and your family today. Even if you don’t believe it, your sibling has a soul, and probably wants to meet you and your mom.

 

[RobnBobA1]

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.

I am really tired of people not knowing their history. For one, Hitler was fighting a war of propaganda. During that time, his countrymen were increasingly becoming against Jews for the fact that people in America are tired of illegal aliens. They saw the jewish people setting up shops and homes, making money that they didn’t have, taking jobs etc, and Hitler used that to his advantage. It is easy to turn peoples dislike towards a group of people into vicious hatred, the Catholics turned their dislike towards Protestants in England to hatred and then to vicious acts of murder, burning and hangings. that is what Hitler did. It was NOT that the Jewish people were not considered human beings or persons, any more than Protestants were considered not human beings or persons to the Catholics. It was that people can do horrid things when they hate another, to include trying to kill all those people…the bible is full of stories in the old testament about Christian exterminating people.

 

[LittleSoldier]

A partial birth abortion means that the baby is just a few inches away from being born

There is nothing that can defend a partial birth abortion, because it is just as easy and as harmful to remove the baby those extra inches

Also, you say you are for the rights of the women
that is a fiar point, but what about the woman inside a womb?

Good point!! You beat me to it! Approximately 50 percent of unborn children murdered before birth are girls. Girls grow up to become women.

When we kill unborn girls, we kill those who would be women.

It is definitely a womens’ rights issue, but why aren’t rights given to the unborn children who would become women? Abortion certainly doesn’t protect them.

This isn’t to say that there is any justification for murdering male children, either. I just get angry when I read about how abortion should be legal because it’s a “womens’ rights” issue.

 

[LittleSoldier]

I am really tired of people not knowing their history. For one, Hitler was fighting a war of propaganda. During that time, his countrymen were increasingly becoming against Jews for the fact that people in America are tired of illegal aliens. They saw the jewish people setting up shops and homes, making money that they didn’t have, taking jobs etc, and Hitler used that to his advantage. It is easy to turn peoples dislike towards a group of people into vicious hatred, the Catholics turned their dislike towards Protestants in England to hatred and then to vicious acts of murder, burning and hangings. that is what Hitler did. It was NOT that the Jewish people were not considered human beings or persons, any more than Protestants were considered not human beings or persons to the Catholics. It was that people can do horrid things when they hate another, to include trying to kill all those people…the bible is full of stories in the old testament about Christian exterminating people.

Perhaps it is you that doesn’t understand history. It is true that Hitler used propaganda, just as England and the United States did. It is also true (although you didn’t note this) that Hitler was amazingly charismatic and had a way of inciting huge crowds into an orgy of hatred. I read about a Jewish man (I’m sorry but I don’t have a reference) who attended one of these mass meetings and he got caught up in the shouting and anger towards his own people.

Bur, what Hitler accomplished was to turn a class of human being (the Jews) into scapegoats. He convinced many gullible Germans that Jews were indeed, less than human. They were considered to be short, large-nosed, frizzy haired, ugly, evil monsters, whereas Aryans were considered to be large, blond haired, blue-eyed super-humans, much superior to any other “ethnic” group.

It is not easy to turn dislike of a group of people into vicious hatred. It takes a lot of planning and in Hitler’s case, it took a charismatic leader who was in the right place at the right time. It is easy to get a group of people so angry that they become violent, but once the group breaks up, the anger dissipates. In Nazi Germany, hatred of Jews went far beyond that found because of group dynamics. Jews were considered less than human and that is why it became easy to exterminate so many of them.

 

[LittleSoldier]

My main interest in caring about abortion at all is the well being of women. If babies were growing in incubators from conception, this issue wouldn’t be of much concern to me aside from an exercise in thinking.

I’m not sure what you’re saying? Sometimes women can develop complications later in pregnancy, and may need to have an abortion done to get the best chance at the best outcome. If partial birth abortion happens to be the technique that’s best for the woman’s well being, then that’s the way it should be done as far as I’m concerned. It would be up to the doctor to decide which method of abortion suits his patient best.

You can’t always offer alternatives that are just as good.

Please explain to me how PBA protects the well being of women. From what I know of PBA, the baby is turned while she is inside the mother’s womb (doesn’t sound very pleasant for the mother), and then the baby is delivered, except for the head. So, here we have a baby, legs sticking out, seconds away from complete birth, when the “physician” takes a pair of scissors, jams them into the base of the baby’s skull and scrambles her brains like eggs.

How can this possibly protect the well being of anyone? What is it about those few seconds before complete delivery that changes anything? The head is still in the birth canal and even though the baby could easily have been delivered, for some reason having the head remain in the birth canal means it’s OK to kill it. Certainly no changes occur in those few seconds.

The baby’s head is kept in the birth canal so that it is legal to kill her. That is the only reason. There is not one physical or mental condition that can justify such torture of both child and mother.

As for “doctors” deciding which method of abortion is best for his/her patient: I wonder how my Mom’s “doctor” was planning on killing me.

Which brings me to another question - my Mom’s “doctor” told her that I should be aborted. Should I have been? I mean, he was a doctor, right? He even probably took the Hippocratic Oath. He was protecting my mother’s health and well-being, right?

So, are you OK with me being aborted? Do you honestly think I should be dead? Do you think my life should have ended before my birth?

 

[PaulinVA]

Any medical procedure that the expected outcome is one death is sick.

 

[JReducation]

Perhaps it is you that doesn’t understand history. It is true that Hitler used propaganda, just as England and the United States did. It is also true (although you didn’t note this) that Hitler was amazingly charismatic and had a way of inciting huge crowds into an orgy of hatred. I read about a Jewish man (I’m sorry but I don’t have a reference) who attended one of these mass meetings and he got caught up in the shouting and anger towards his own people.

Bur, what Hitler accomplished was to turn a class of human being (the Jews) into scapegoats. He convinced many gullible Germans that Jews were indeed, less than human. They were considered to be short, large-nosed, frizzy haired, ugly, evil monsters, whereas Aryans were considered to be large, blond haired, blue-eyed super-humans, much superior to any other “ethnic” group.

It is not easy to turn dislike of a group of people into vicious hatred. It takes a lot of planning and in Hitler’s case, it took a charismatic leader who was in the right place at the right time. It is easy to get a group of people so angry that they become violent, but once the group breaks up, the anger dissipates. In Nazi Germany, hatred of Jews went far beyond that found because of group dynamics. Jews were considered less than human and that is why it became easy to exterminate so many of them.

Add to Hitler’s list:

Homosexuals
People with disabilities
Gypsies

All of them were considered expendable. What made them expendable, if they had the same human dignity as anyone else? The only way that Hitler could justify that they were expendible was to create an image of them as lesser than the rest of humanity. Let’s not forget that he also used abortion to eliminate the reproduction of undesireable people.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[RobnBobA1]

Perhaps it is you that doesn’t understand history. It is true that Hitler used propaganda, just as England and the United States did. It is also true (although you didn’t note this) that Hitler was amazingly charismatic and had a way of inciting huge crowds into an orgy of hatred. I read about a Jewish man (I’m sorry but I don’t have a reference) who attended one of these mass meetings and he got caught up in the shouting and anger towards his own people.

Bur, what Hitler accomplished was to turn a class of human being (the Jews) into scapegoats. He convinced many gullible Germans that Jews were indeed, less than human. They were considered to be short, large-nosed, frizzy haired, ugly, evil monsters, whereas Aryans were considered to be large, blond haired, blue-eyed super-humans, much superior to any other “ethnic” group.

It is not easy to turn dislike of a group of people into vicious hatred. It takes a lot of planning and in Hitler’s case, it took a charismatic leader who was in the right place at the right time. It is easy to get a group of people so angry that they become violent, but once the group breaks up, the anger dissipates. In Nazi Germany, hatred of Jews went far beyond that found because of group dynamics. Jews were considered less than human and that is why it became easy to exterminate so many of them.

Superior to another group does not mean that said group is not a human person. I consider myself to be superior in worth to murderers, child molesters and any number of criminals and yet I would never classify them as anything other than living human beings. That is the difference. You (or others I do not remember who wrote the original post I was quoting from) seem to think that they have catagorized them as less than human beings in the physical scientific and biologic sense, when in reality they were not…they were simply considered less worthy of certain rights. In many countries we have that without removing someones status of human beings. In Canada for example, if you are not a citizen you do not get the right to vote or some other limited rights. This does not mean that you are not a human being, just that you are not worthy of some rights that the country have to offer, based on your citizenship, not personhood.

In the issue of abortion, or embryo/fetal rights, it is based on their biological function or rather than organism function. We classify living things and organisms byhow they function in the now. Plants function in a different way than animals, hence the different catagory, and etc with all living things. multi-cellular organisms function in a specific way. All human beings with brain function, function in the same way. They are composed of organs that work together to keep the whole singular being alive. An embryo/fetus before thiis stage of development function in a uniquely different way, on a cellular level they are very much alive and no one disclaims that. On an organism level that every stage of living human being functions from child to teen to adult to the elderly, to black, to white, to asian, to disabled, to sleeping, to comatose, to catholics to protestants to jews, they do not function in that way. You would be applying a different standard to human cells that are living as human cells do and developing as they do, to the same function that it does not yet have.

 

[kimmielittle]

I am really tired of people not knowing their history. For one, Hitler was fighting a war of propaganda. During that time, his countrymen were increasingly becoming against Jews for the fact that people in America are tired of illegal aliens. They saw the jewish people setting up shops and homes, making money that they didn’t have, taking jobs etc, and Hitler used that to his advantage. It is easy to turn peoples dislike towards a group of people into vicious hatred, the Catholics turned their dislike towards Protestants in England to hatred and then to vicious acts of murder, burning and hangings. that is what Hitler did. It was NOT that the Jewish people were not considered human beings or persons, any more than Protestants were considered not human beings or persons to the Catholics. It was that people can do horrid things when they hate another, to include trying to kill all those people…the bible is full of stories in the old testament about Christian exterminating people.

Hiyas

I agree "I am really tired of people not knowing their history.'

Here is a good read

These genocides cost the lives of probably 16,315,000 people. Most likely the Nazis wiped out 5,291,000 Jews, 258,000 Gypsies, 10,547,000 Slavs, and 220,000 homosexuals. They also “euthanized” 173,500 handicapped Germans. Then in repression, terrorism, reprisals, and other cold-blooded killings done to impose and maintain their rule throughout Europe, the Nazis murdered more millions including French, Dutch, Serbs, Slovenes, Czechs, and others. In total, they likely annihilated 20,946,000 human beings.

 

[Montalo]

FlyingFish

you said earlier tha you would abort based on gender, correct

then, when i brought up the right of the women inside the women, you said that they, in your logic, are not people and as such arent women.

Then, how could you abort based on gender, if you do not believe that they are persons and as such, do not have gender?

 

[flyingfish]

FlyingFish

you said earlier tha you would abort based on gender, correct

then, when i brought up the right of the women inside the women, you said that they, in your logic, are not people and as such arent women.

Then, how could you abort based on gender, if you do not believe that they are persons and as such, do not have gender?

Haha, clever, but sorry it doesn’t work. The fetus is still male or female. But no, I wouldn’t call a female fetus a “woman”, because the word woman implies someone who is a self aware, thinking person.

Since you want to be picky about words, the thread should have talked about abortion based on sex rather than gender, since sex refers to biological traits whereas gender to the social roles.

 

[Persuader]

No, that isn’t true. What clinches is for pro-lifers is that a new human being with human DNA is formed at conception by the combination of the sperm and the ovum. A liver cell in a human being contains human DNA. It’s not a person - it’s a liver cell.

It is true. What is being claimed is that if x is a living organism with human DNA, x is a person. The only difference between that and what you said, is to include the line “formed at conception”. I would think it odd to give value to a process. Surely it is the living organism with human DNA that supposedly has value and is a person, not the process of conception.

Again, you are confusing “sequence of human DNA” with “a human being that has human DNA.” There is a difference. It may very well be true that an epidermal cell can be manipulated so that a “clone” is formed but this does not devalue an epidermal cell. An epidermal cell is just an epidermal cell. It is used by a human being (in the case of human beings) for whatever the epidermis does (protection, release of heat, etc.) Simply because an epidermal cell contains a human DNA sequence does not make that cell a human being or a person. If that were true, we would all be masses of tiny persons, being produced en masse and dying in droves every day. * It is the combination of a sperm and an ovum (which both contain a sequence of human DNA) that makes a human being a human being and a person, not the strand of DNA.*

I am not confusing the DNA-code with a cell operating with human DNA. Of course there is a difference. Let me elaborate on the general argument. A blastocyst (early stage development) has an inner cell mass or embryoblast.The embryonic stem cells contained in the embryoblast are the ones who develop into an embryo and later a fetus. These have the potential to develop into a human person (if the DNA is human).

Now, what makes the blastocyst human (or whatever species the DNA writes for) is written in the code. It has little to do with the cell environment. This has been proved in principle by research in synthetic biology, where they changed a species by injecting the cell with the genome of a different species (=67&cHash=d71e2ecff8).

Ideas of vitality and similar things are historic and incorrect. What defines a species is it’s DNA. So if you are going to say that a blastocyst is a human person, it has to be based on the fact that it contains human DNA, not that the human DNA is in a certain cell environment. If you are of another opinion, I would like to see a good argument for why this rudimentary and interchangeable cell environment should have value or contribute to personhood.

Now, the point of mentioning the skin cell, is simply to say that even a skin cell, given the right manipulation, can operate like an embryonic stem cell (sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080211172631.htm). So, if a blastocyst is a human person simply by having embryonic stem cells capable of generating every cell in the human body, then a similar collection of skin cells manipulated into embryonic-like stem cells should be given the same value or rights. Either that, or you need to explain why and how the interchangeable cell environment is 1) giving value or personhood to the mentioned cell collection, or 2) how the cell environment is a person in itself.

When your only criteria for determining personhood is a human cell in a certain cell environment (minimally a zygote), you will also miss other living organisms or systems that might be able to generate personal identities.For instance, it would seem like God is not deserving of personhood since he is not made of human DNA. If we were to encounter intelligent life-forms from other planets, even much more intelligent and complex than us, they would not be persons or be deserving of personhood since they do not have human DNA. Other animals on this planet could not ever be considered persons no matter how complex their behavior and attributes. I think this line of thinking is obviously false. There are certain mental attributes that humans have, and it is those attributes that ultimately makes us a human person, not the DNA-code. Early in our development, we cannot have these attributes because there isn’t even a CNS/brain that can be attributed with those mental attributes (as is the case with a zygote or blastocyst). The required hardware has not been built yet.

 

[Persuader]

You completely avoided my question. I’ll break it down for you.

1. What does your conscience tell you about abortion?
2. Why are you in a Catholic forum discussing this, if you’re not in favor of the life of the unborn?
3. What do you get out of it?

I’ll close by saying, again. If you want to learn the moral law, I will help you. If you want to tease just to feed your ego or have fun, I don’t want to play. I did not consecrate my life to play mind games. Therefore, I would like an answer to my questions, at least out of respect.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I don’t really understand why you see yourself entitled to having those questions answered, but I can answer if you like.

1. Well, my opinion it that it is the law, and that the law has a good foundation. I have no objections to it.
2. Because flyingfish spoke about something I recently wrote a paper about.
3. Initially I wanted to see if flyingfish could be influenced or persuaded to change her mind. Now I am responding to objections, and learning about how Catholics react to secular thinking.