Abortion in the case of rape AND the life of the mother

[Rau]

You do not, you cannot, profess empathy toward a girl or a woman who is pregnant against her wishes for whatever reason.

I think one certainly can and one would be callous indeed if one could not. But the debate is about what can be licitly done to deal with - to make the best of - the situation. And I agree with you that a great many women would find the act of abortion horrendous in itself, a source of great sorrow - on top of the rape.

 

[Sy_Noe]

And here are some of Pope Francis’ personal opinions he expressed, perhaps just as a compassionate, honest and warm human being, to an interviewer. His humble words don’t need bold letters or larger fonts:

Pope Francis faulted the Roman Catholic church for focusing too much on gays, abortion and contraception, saying the church has become “obsessed” with those issues to the detriment of its larger mission to be “home for all,”.

“We have to find a new balance, otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel," Francis said in the interview.

"The church has sometimes locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules,’ Francis said. “The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.”

“Pope Francis critiques people who focus too much on tradition, who want to go to time in the past that does not exist anymore,” said Fr. James Martin of America Magazine, which published an English translation of the interview. “He reminds people that thinking with the church, in obedience, does not just mean thinking with the hierarchy, that church is a lot bigger than its hierarchy.”

In the interview, Francis does not come out in support of gay marriage, abortion rights or contraception, saying that church positions on those issues are “clear,” but he added that the "the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.”

Milasol, I have no doubt that there are lots of people in Argentina, and world-wide, who think like you. Our Pope is not one of them.

Has CAF found the balance yet?

 

[Rau]

And here are some of Pope Francis’ personal opinions he expressed, perhaps just as a compassionate, honest and warm human being, to an interviewer. His humble words don’t need bold letters or larger fonts:

Pope Francis faulted the Roman Catholic church for focusing too much on gays, abortion and contraception, saying the church has become “obsessed” with those issues to the detriment of its larger mission to be “home for all,”.

“We have to find a new balance, otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel," Francis said in the interview.

"The church has sometimes locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules,’ Francis said. “The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.”

“Pope Francis critiques people who focus too much on tradition, who want to go to time in the past that does not exist anymore,” said Fr. James Martin of America Magazine, which published an English translation of the interview. “He reminds people that thinking with the church, in obedience, does not just mean thinking with the hierarchy, that church is a lot bigger than its hierarchy.”

In the interview, Francis does not come out in support of gay marriage, abortion rights or contraception, saying that church positions on those issues are “clear,” but he added that the "the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.”

Milasol, I have no doubt that there are lots of people in Argentina, and world-wide, who think like you. Our Pope is not one of them.

What is it that you think the Pope is proposing then? To make abortion OK in some circumstances, or to show more love and concern for the victims, at all times, and regardless of their choices?

 

[Milasol]

Do not EVER let me catch you posting on the genesis of poverty. ONE WORD about irresponsible sexual behavior and I will be all over you. Fair warning.

Ask the nine-year old little girl whether or not the case is esoteric and almost non-existent.

What?

Ask the baby if he or she prefers to die with saline solution slowly or with a vacuum.

 

[Prodigirl]

Being raped is inhumane. Having to carry a baby that is not of your choosing could be inhumane. Killing the baby is a sin.

Religion will tell you killing a baby ~ or even a fetus ~ is a sin.
Inborn morality will tell most people that killing a baby ~ or even a fetus ~ is wrong.

If a person, male or female, kills a child, or a woman aborts a pregnancy, on whose soul does the responsibility lie? Who, according to doctrine and dogma, will pay the eternal price for that act?

If you strip away all of the peripheral players, you will find your answer.

I believe it is of no concern to ANYONE but the person who is making the choice to take the action. It is a private decision, and any consequences, be they freezing in Dante’s hell or a quick trip to Purgatory, or anything in between, shall be borne by the person who decides to take the action. Although we are all entitled to our opinions, so far, anyhow, I fully expect they will flourish on this topic. But I don’t waver. How can the “sin” of a woman two states away have any real, true impact on anyone but herself?

 

[Prodigirl]

What?

Ask the baby if he or she prefers to die with saline solution slowly or with a vacuum.

Excuse me! The comment was about POVERTY, not abortion.

 

[Pug]

Reply to Pug:
Are you a man?
Have you ever seen or spoken with a victim of rape, especially a very young girl.
Would you seriously sentence a rape victim to carry the seed of her rapist for 9 months? What if she was also the victim of an incestuous attack, possibly by her father?
Can you imagine what long-term psychological damage would result if she was forced to go through a pregnancy? It’s inhumane to label a termination as “Murder” under these circumstances.

It causes me to doubt that the discussion will be fruitful if someone sees my sex as determining the validity of my ability to contribute. I am a bona fide female, though that is irrelevant. I did not have some dream childhood.

I have spoken to a rape victim. If I had become pregnant as a girl by my father, I would have preferred to have *not *been subject to abortion. A sick relationship with your father is disastrous, and in my experience one does not recover, ever. There is no way abortion would “fix” any portion of it. Nor could it have the power to mitigate it, other than some silly adult telling me the abortion would make it better, but I guarantee I would not have felt any better. I got told lots of silly things by adults to make it “better” and it only ever made me feel more violated and more ignored and more irrelevant to the people around me.

No one is accusing the 9 year old of anything. It would be wrong to so accuse a small girl of murder or any evil whatsoever on account of the people around her forcing an abortion upon her. The 9 year old isn’t having an abortion like a 35 year old does.

In my view, not harming the psyche of a child by forcing an abortion is not the same as a “sentence”. As a 9 year old, I would not have been able to view it as a sentence, that’s for sure, even if someone oddly tried to convince me that I was under one, which would only have served to make me feel worse. Likely at the time the little girl didn’t understand that she had been given an abortion.

Also, it is quite possible that the mother (I understand that in the 9 year old case it was the mother who took the child to the doctors because something seemed wrong with her child?) is not guilty of murder either. Who knows what she was told by the doctors. Doctors in my experience do not always tell the whole story. But then I have lots of experience with doctors with me being a child, so maybe I have a skewed view.

I note you did not answer my question, though.

 

[Hans_W]

Catholics focus on saving the lives of both mother and child. Why do we reduce this conversation to an either/or decision?

For the simple reason because we discuss a case where the mother’s life was in danger. Two doctors attested that the 9-year old girl weighing 36 kg, pregnant with twins is likely to die.

 

[Milasol]

And here are some of Pope Francis’ personal opinions he expressed, perhaps just as a compassionate, honest and warm human being, to an interviewer. His humble words don’t need bold letters or larger fonts:

Pope Francis faulted the Roman Catholic church for focusing too much on gays, abortion and contraception, saying the church has become “obsessed” with those issues to the detriment of its larger mission to be “home for all,”.

“We have to find a new balance, otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel," Francis said in the interview.

"The church has sometimes locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules,’ Francis said. “The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.”

“Pope Francis critiques people who focus too much on tradition, who want to go to time in the past that does not exist anymore,” said Fr. James Martin of America Magazine, which published an English translation of the interview. “He reminds people that thinking with the church, in obedience, does not just mean thinking with the hierarchy, that church is a lot bigger than its hierarchy.”

In the interview, Francis does not come out in support of gay marriage, abortion rights or contraception, saying that church positions on those issues are “clear,” but he added that the "the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.”

Milasol, I have no doubt that there are lots of people in Argentina, and world-wide, who think like you. Our Pope is not one of them.

Actually he not only thinks like me but he said himself that he believes in what the Church teaches. Might want to look at what the Church says about it.

And here is a picture of a pro-life group with the Pope in Argentina. My cousins are with him on this one. s237.photobucket.com/user/msolanet/media/5efa1efa99.jpg.html
I think I know what Pope Francis thinks more than any here or you. He thinks abortion is horrific under any circumstances.

Oh and the quote about tradition you posted has absolutely nothing to do with abortion.

Not to focus on an issue doesn’t mean that he doesn’t agree with it. Learn what he says before you put words on his mouth.

Oh and what did Pope Francis say at the UN when he addressed the nations there?

“…an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share”

 

[808Catholic]

Religion will tell you killing a baby ~ or even a fetus ~ is a sin.
Inborn morality will tell most people that killing a baby ~ or even a fetus ~ is wrong.

If a person, male or female, kills a child, or a woman aborts a pregnancy, on whose soul does the responsibility lie? Who, according to doctrine and dogma, will pay the eternal price for that act?

If you strip away all of the peripheral players, you will find your answer.

I believe it is of no concern to ANYONE but the person who is making the choice to take the action. It is a private decision, and any consequences, be they freezing in Dante’s hell or a quick trip to Purgatory, or anything in between, shall be borne by the person who decides to take the action. Although we are all entitled to our opinions, so far, anyhow, I fully expect they will flourish on this topic. But I don’t waver. How can the “sin” of a woman two states away have any real, true impact on anyone but herself?

Who pays the eternal price for the abortion? The woman, the doctor, the nurses, the receptionist, the supplier of the medicine, the hospital administrator, anyone who knows and condones, supports, or even looks the other way is culpable. God have mercy on all our souls.

 

[808Catholic]

For the simple reason because we discuss a case where the mother’s life was in danger. Two doctors attested that the 9-year old girl weighing 36 kg, pregnant with twins is likely to die.

I’m not a doctor so I can’t weigh in on the veracity of that assessment. Is there a way to put the mother on life support so that her children could have a chance for life?

 

[Hans_W]

According to some posters, this lovely young lady should be dead.

i.imgur.com/pS9LyKT.jpg

On edit:

So should this lovely young lady:

i.imgur.com/7yAGcNC.png

(click on the pix to go to the links)

That’s wonderful Markomalley!!
Perhaps we should also have some pictures of the thousands of traumatized women and girls, plus the ones who didn’t make it alive through their forced pregnancy.

 

[Milasol]

Who pays the eternal price for the abortion? The woman, the doctor, the nurses, the receptionist, the supplier of the medicine, the hospital administrator, anyone who knows and condones, supports, or even looks the other way is culpable. God have mercy on all our souls.

Well said.

Especially “…anyone who knows and condones, supports, or even looks the other way is culpable”

 

[Hans_W]

I’m not a doctor so I can’t weigh in on the veracity of that assessment. Is there a way to put the mother on life support so that her children could have a chance for life?

We have discussed that option before.
So, you want keep that 9-year-old child on life support, as a sort of breading machine. Then cut the twins out, just before her uterus bursts. If she dies - well, didn’t turn out as expected. But we’ve done our duty.

 

[Pug]

Well, Emily will need to explain herself. But she has said that killing the unborn child of a rape victim is akin to removal of a skin cancer. I cannot see how/why the rights of the child vary according to the behaviour of the father. Which is why I wondered whether she’d be OK with early stage abortion regardless of whether rape was involved - though she got annoyed with me for enquiring. If the baby is not human, it would not matter whether the mother was a rape victim. But her focus on “rape victims” requires one to assume her view is that the Child’s rights are subject to the mother’s will, because of rape. She expresses (understandable) great empathy for the mother, but none for the baby. It is like a cancer. Pope Francis, whom she lauds, has said the exact opposite.

The skin cancer comment is tragic/mysterious to me, other than perhaps the poster views pregnancy as somehow foreign in the situation of rape. Sperm seems foreign to the victim in the situation of rape and so does conception (witness the possibility of the morning after pill for a Catholic). Perhaps the poster is extending foreign-ness to the actual child of a mother in the case where the mother is too young to be a mother in their view, so it is no longer the girl’s child, somehow. If it has no mother, then it becomes a cancer? I am trying to find a path to see their view, but I don’t really “get” their view. I find it hard to view such a child as not having a mother, but it could be related to the rhetoric that one finds about “every child a wanted child”, and then making that into the unwanted are “un-children”.

I am appalled by the idea that the moral quality of the father determines the value of the child.

 

[markomalley]

It is an excruciating rock/hard place for these women. Your attitude is decidedly, emphatically and, unfortunately, UNChristian. I do not believe you represent true Christian thought with regard to the topic.

Since I don’t represent true Christian thought, how about this:

How about St John Paul II? Does he represent true Christian thought?

1. Then too, when we look at one of the most sensitive aspects of the situation of women in the world, how can we not mention the long and degrading history, albeit often an “underground” history, of violence against women in the area of sexuality? At the threshold of the Third Millennium we cannot remain indifferent and resigned before this phenomenon. The time has come to condemn vigorously the types of sexual violence which frequently have women for their object and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence. Nor can we fail, in the name of the respect due to the human person, to condemn the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit.

In contrast to these sorts of perversion, what great appreciation must be shown to those women who, with a heroic love for the child they have conceived, proceed with a pregnancy resulting from the injustice of rape. Here we are thinking of atrocities perpetrated not only in situations of war, still so common in the world, but also in societies which are blessed by prosperity and peace and yet are often corrupted by a culture of hedonistic permissiveness which aggravates tendencies to aggressive male behaviour. In these cases the choice to have an abortion always remains a grave sin. But before being something to blame on the woman, it is a crime for which guilt needs to be attributed to men and to the complicity of the general social environment.

- Letter to Women, 1995​

Or how about the thoughts of Pope Francis:

1. Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”.** It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life**. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?

- Apostolic Exhortation Evalgelium Gaudium, 2013​

Do Pope St John Paul II and Pope Francis come closer?

(You will note that they, too, say that abortion is appropriate after rape)

Or are they unqualified to represent Christian thought because they are male?

 

[Sy_Noe]

No I don’t, especially in the case of a little girl, already violated and traumatised.
In fact why should any rape victim be forced to carry the child of a rapist. I’ts inhumane.

I haven’t read much of this particular thread. There is always so much discussion going around on the topic. And I just personally feel tonight to heed Pope Francis’s advice so I’m taking a break tonight and don’t want to spend much time tonight talking about it. So I’ll only say there are indeed at least 2 innocent lives involved and it appears to me you and Hans come from that vantage point and understand there may not always be a perfect solution to every case. God bless you both.

 

[Hans_W]

I think I know what Pope Francis thinks more than any here or you …

Well, that’s great! Then why don’t you tell us what he meant by saying the Church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception? Why is he criticizing the church for putting dogma before love, for prioritizing moral doctrines?

 

[Rau]

I haven’t read much of this particular thread. There is always so much discussion going around on the topic. And I just personally feel tonight to heed Pope Francis’s advice so I’m taking a break tonight and don’t want to spend much time tonight talking about it. So I’ll only say there are indeed at least 2 innocent lives involved and it appears to me you and Hans come from that vantage point and understand there may not always be a perfect solution to every case. God bless you both.

Please identify any poster who sees, or thinks they see a perfect solution. Every poster agrees with your bolded text. It is a mistake to believe there is always a way to get from an horrendous situation like this, to one where no one comes to harm.

 

[Rau]

Well, that’s great! Then why don’t you tell us what he meant by saying the Church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception? Why is he criticizing the church for putting dogma before love, for prioritizing moral doctrines?

I thought I already did . He criticised obsession with some issues to the detriment of other pastoral goods. What he did not do was suggest the moral teaching is wrong or needs adjustment! If you think his quotes (the bolded one for example - since that is highly specific), offers wiggle room on abortion, please point it out!