Abortion on Tumblr

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lynnanine

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Hello! This is my first post here, so I hope I’m doing everything correctly. 🙂

Anyway, lately I’ve been posting pro-life stuff on my Tumblr. It’s not completely unexpected that pro-choicers take the opportunity to reblog and attempt to refute/debate. I respond, and make sure to remain calm, polite, and logical. However, I never feel like I’m making any headway. I keep telling myself that I’m hopefully planting a seed and that maybe one day, with God’s help, it’ll grow, but until then I just feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.

I don’t want to “give up” and quit replying, but at the same time, it’s really difficult to continue refuting their arguments and they refuse to consider anything else. Does anyone have any advice for me? Thanks! May God bless you. 🙂
 
Keep on keeping on is the best advice I can think of.

While you will find that those who aggressively oppose you will take up the challenge to do so, never forget that in the background may be someone who is on the fence and who might have changed their opinions for the better without you ever knowing.

You are witnessing not only for your faith but for the lives of those babies who have nobody else to speak for them.

Be not discouraged.

Good luck and God bless you!
 
lynnanine said:
Hello! This is my first post here, so I hope I’m doing everything correctly. 🙂

Anyway, lately I’ve been posting pro-life stuff on my Tumblr. It’s not completely unexpected that pro-choicers take the opportunity to reblog and attempt to refute/debate. I respond, and make sure to remain calm, polite, and logical. However, I never feel like I’m making any headway. I keep telling myself that I’m hopefully planting a seed and that maybe one day, with God’s help, it’ll grow, but until then I just feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.

I don’t want to “give up” and quit replying, but at the same time, it’s really difficult to continue refuting their arguments and they refuse to consider anything else. Does anyone have any advice for me? Thanks! May God bless you. 🙂
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People who debate do not want to lose (I know this from experience). Only someone open to learning would acknowledge that they have changed their mind. Also, you never know who is reading but not posting who’s views might have changed. 🙂
 
Be bold! Don’t change! We need more sensible people like you in the world! I agree with the two comments preceding mine.
 
jdoggin said:
Be bold! Don’t change! We need more sensible people like you in the world! I agree with the two comments preceding mine.
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Great comments on this thread and I agree “Be bold!” Abortion is murder of a child.
Read about Gianna Jessen for great inspiration of a survivor of late term abortion who is a champion for the unborn.
She inspires me.
Mary.
 
Thanks all! I hadn’t thought about the people who see what’s going on without posting anything. I have watched a video of Gianna Jessen; it was quite awesome. Thanks again, guys, it’s helpful. Sometimes I just have being motivated to sit down and knowingly face opposition (especially when it’s about something as tragic as abortion), but it’s definitely worth it.
 
lynnanine said:
Thanks all! I hadn’t thought about the people who see what’s going on without posting anything. I have watched a video of Gianna Jessen; it was quite awesome. Thanks again, guys, it’s helpful. Sometimes I just have being motivated to sit down and knowingly face opposition (especially when it’s about something as tragic as abortion), but it’s definitely worth it.
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God bless you!
Mary
 
lynnanine said:
Hello! This is my first post here, so I hope I’m doing everything correctly. 🙂

Anyway, lately I’ve been posting pro-life stuff on my Tumblr. It’s not completely unexpected that pro-choicers take the opportunity to reblog and attempt to refute/debate. I respond, and make sure to remain calm, polite, and logical. However, I never feel like I’m making any headway. I keep telling myself that I’m hopefully planting a seed and that maybe one day, with God’s help, it’ll grow, but until then I just feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.

I don’t want to “give up” and quit replying, but at the same time, it’s really difficult to continue refuting their arguments and they refuse to consider anything else. Does anyone have any advice for me? Thanks! May God bless you. 🙂
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Pick your battles. Refute only a few salient points from well respected and articulate bloggers. Ignore the rude and incoherent - they refute themselves!
 
runningdude said:
Pick your battles. Refute only a few salient points from well respected and articulate bloggers. Ignore the rude and incoherent - they refute themselves!
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Oh definitely! Luckily I haven’t run across any trolls yet, everyone I’ve talked with has at least been polite I think, if rather unmoving in their stance. There’s one that’s sort of walking the line, so I’m not sure how long I’ll be talking with them. Thanks. 🙂
 
If anyone is still around, I could use a little help/feedback on a particular post. I haven’t replied yet, but the question was put to me as follows:

“Okay, let’s think about it this way. You have the choice to save one million adults or one million fertilized eggs. You can only save one. Which do you pick?”

I’m pretty sure she is expecting me to choose the adults (as I’m sure she’d expect any “sane” person to do), as recently we’ve been discussing zygotes and babies in the womb and such. Do you guys think that an acceptable answer would be to say that I honestly don’t know? It’s a million lives either way, and I highly doubt I’ll ever be put in such a position. I’m not quite sure on how to elaborate it though, other than saying again, it’s a million lives either way, which I’m sure she’ll jump on me for. Not that trying to be popular is the reason to be pro-life (or Catholic for that reason), but I try to think of possible objections so that I can try and counter them in my reply.
 
Remember when debating online that you are not really debating the person. You are making arguments that will hopefully change someone else’s mind. That’s why it’s important to make clear, concise arguments and to remain charitable. It’s also a good idea to point out any logical fallacies as well as while that won’t sway your opponent, it will bolster your viewpoint in the eyes of neutral parties.
 
Point out that it’s an impossible choice. Literally, it isn’t possible, since the lives of a million adults will not depend on the lives of a million zygotes, but a million zygotes do depend on adults to let them gestate to a natural birth.
 
Thanks again. I definitely try to make “clear, concise arguments” and I always make sure I remain calm. It’s just really frustrating. But I’m going to try and “keep on keeping on” as Dex said earlier. I might not change this particular person’s mind, but I’m trying to keep any lurkers in mind. Hopefully I can do some good!
 
lynnanine said:
If anyone is still around, I could use a little help/feedback on a particular post. I haven’t replied yet, but the question was put to me as follows:

“Okay, let’s think about it this way. You have the choice to save one million adults or one million fertilized eggs. You can only save one. Which do you pick?”

I’m pretty sure she is expecting me to choose the adults (as I’m sure she’d expect any “sane” person to do), as recently we’ve been discussing zygotes and babies in the womb and such. Do you guys think that an acceptable answer would be to say that I honestly don’t know? It’s a million lives either way, and I highly doubt I’ll ever be put in such a position. I’m not quite sure on how to elaborate it though, other than saying again, it’s a million lives either way, which I’m sure she’ll jump on me for. Not that trying to be popular is the reason to be pro-life (or Catholic for that reason), but I try to think of possible objections so that I can try and counter them in my reply.
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These are artificial “thought experiments” used primarily to discredit moral codes. The situations are generally too ridiculous to occur, and thus don’t need a solution.
 
I like runningdude’s point that this thought experiment has no practical utility. At the same time, it does represent this young woman’s primary assumption about abortion: It’s do or die. It’s true that most women abort out of fear: fear of being abandoned, hated, forgotten, left behind. Fear of flunking out of school, losing a job/promotion, or some combination of all of these and more.

Can you question the assumption? Certainly. Could you also try to understand where the person is coming from? Yep. If you’re life depended on killing another person who was attacking you, you’d be totally justified in killing them. The Church calls it legitimate defense. Is that what the baby is doing to his/her mother? No.

What can you do?


  1. *]Question the assumption: How do you know that we have to choose between adults and embryos?
    *]Create an analogy that helps her see that the assumption is false or unfair? (I can’t think of a good example here)

    I hope this helps. Keep up the good fight!

    God bless,

    Fr. Scott, AVI
 
It is a ridiculous example.
Reminds me of Sophie’s Choice.
Ask her if she had two living children and had to choose one to live or die which one she would choose.
Same thing.
 
lynnanine said:
If anyone is still around, I could use a little help/feedback on a particular post. I haven’t replied yet, but the question was put to me as follows:

“Okay, let’s think about it this way. You have the choice to save one million adults or one million fertilized eggs. You can only save one. Which do you pick?”
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One problem with this dilemma lies in the “hidden” differences between the choices that play into a reasonable response. Who will tend the million fertilized eggs to keep them viable? On the other hand, the million adults will presumably look after themselves and provide millions of new eggs in short order. The example is skewed. What needs to be proposed is a counterexample where the choices have no mitigating features to make one obviously the “better” choice.

A second problem is that the dilemma plays on a phenomena of economics called the “law of diminishing marginal utility,” which simply means that the more you have of something the less “value” it has. The above dilemma plays on this by seeking to bury or devalue the intrinsic worth of an individual human being, either in the form of a fetus or adult, among the 999, 999 others on each side of the option. In other words, how valuable can one really be when you have nearly a million others?

What if it came down to the very last individual, would it make a difference if that individual were in fetal or mature form? Of course, this doesn’t make any sense in the case of human beings since a last individual would essentially mean the end of the species homo sapien.

It does, however, make sense when speaking of living things, such as the genus quercus (oak trees) that are classified as being monoecious where one individual plant can produce both male and female flowering parts.

Using a "last specimen” counter proposal it is possible to set up a scenario using the classic acorn v oak tree that has been used by pro-choicers to “show” that a fetus is not a person. In this scenario, if it came down to the very last individual quercus or oak being in the form of an acorn or tree, would it matter to the survival of the genus “oak?” We would not dismiss the existence of an acorn as irrelevant because it was not in the form of a tree. We would carefully tend even an acorn as the last hope for the survival of the genus quercus. Its value would be identical to a fully mature oak, in fact, it would be even more valuable (under the law of diminishing marginal utility) because, unlike the oak tree with hundreds of acorns dangling from it, the very last acorn (assuming no more trees existed) would indeed be the “last hope” for the survival of oaks. In this case a fetal form would be considered, biologically speaking, to be more valuable and crucial to the survival of the genus quercus than a fully grown oak tree.
 
Thanks y’all. I’m keep on keeping on. 🙂 If I feel like it’s getting to be too much, I’ve been taking a day off and recharging myself, as well as doing more research into more arguments that the pro-choice people try to use. Right now I’m looking into the one that asks if abortion is murder, is a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter?

First off, the main difference between abortion and miscarriages is that abortion is done intentionally. Which (as the pro-choicers would want you to believe) would lead people to call a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter, since it is not done intentionally while abortion is. However, involuntary manslaughter is divided into two categories, constructive manslaughter (killing someone without intent while committing an unlawful act) and criminally negligent manslaughter (serious negligence or serious recklessness). My understanding is that most miscarriages happen because of a medical problem of the mother or a problem with the development of the fetus. As far as I’m aware, having a medical problem doesn’t count as an unlawful act, or as serious negligence or recklessness. What are y’all’s thoughts on this? (If you don’t mind.)
 
You nailed it lynnanine. Unless of course the mother purposely does something to destoy her health or that of the baby so as to induce a miscarriage: drinking, drugs, etc. Keep up the good work…
 
lynnanine said:
Thanks y’all. I’m keep on keeping on. 🙂 If I feel like it’s getting to be too much, I’ve been taking a day off and recharging myself, as well as doing more research into more arguments that the pro-choice people try to use. Right now I’m looking into the one that asks if abortion is murder, is a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter?

First off, the main difference between abortion and miscarriages is that abortion is done intentionally. Which (as the pro-choicers would want you to believe) would lead people to call a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter, since it is not done intentionally while abortion is. However, involuntary manslaughter is divided into two categories, constructive manslaughter (killing someone without intent while committing an unlawful act) and criminally negligent manslaughter (serious negligence or serious recklessness). My understanding is that most miscarriages happen because of a medical problem of the mother or a problem with the development of the fetus. As far as I’m aware, having a medical problem doesn’t count as an unlawful act, or as serious negligence or recklessness. What are y’all’s thoughts on this? (If you don’t mind.)
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The argument is less elaborate than that; a baby who miscarries simply got sick and died :(. There is no “involuntary manslaughter” involved when an “adult” person dies due to illness; nor is there is any sin involved when a tiny, tiny person dies due to illness.

Comparing a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) to manslaughter is a straw man argument trying to prove that Pro-life individuals want to persecute woman. Death is an accepted part of Catholic teaching, and it does not wish to criminalize natural death. It simply wishes to “re”-criminalize inducing death unnaturally.
 
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