Abortion

[YosefYosep]

Well, I think the argument of “It’s not a human-- it’s just a bunch of cells!”, which is commonly used by pro-choicers, is an altogether callous statement. I believe that a fetus is more than the sum of its parts; it’s a seperate creation than that of the mother. It doesn’t belong to the mother-- it belongs to God. To attack the sacredness of life is to attack God’s very character.

Amen.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

If you want to learn more about Roe v. Wade, here’s a good site: endroe.org and I find abort73.com to be a good site as well on the abortion issues.

I always like to warn people that Abort73 is a GRAPHIC website. It’s also secular although the founders are Christian. They decided that the pro-life effort needed a website that wouldn’t immediately alienate non-Christians. Well you can read all about their philosophy in the “About” section on the website. The movie clip is on the first page and does have warnings. It used to start playing automatically but now you have to click on it to start. If you do that, be prepared.

 

[Tyrael_the_Arch]

I applaud you for being pro-life but I disagree with your statement that an unborn child
It most certainly IS human! If it’s not a human being, then what is it? An egg and a sperm are not human, but at the moment of conception, a human being is created. That embryo is just in it’s earliest stages of development. Even after birth, we still develop up until death. An infant doesn’t look the same as a 5yo, a 12yo, an 18yo, a 25yo, and 85yo etc… But, that embryo looks exactly like it should in the human beings earliest days of life.

If you want to learn more about Roe v. Wade, here’s a good site: endroe.org and I find abort73.com to be a good site as well on the abortion issues.

I might have misquoted that, I meant to say that it isn’t a human being when its just a sperm cell and an egg cell, but I understand and agree with what you mean that a human being is a human being from the moment of conception
I’m very dumbfounded on why abortion has been turned into such a religious argument, which I think closes it off to a lot of other supporters that aren’t catholic or religious. It’s more of a humanist argument in my opinion
I hope the world will come to its senses

 

[kimhouli]

So I’ve always been a pretty liberal person, I’m still very liberal on several issues including gay marriage and healthcare and poverty, but I don’t want to talk about any of that today. I want to discuss the topic of abortion.
Abortion is one of the few issues that I almost entirely align with the right on. Even if I were not a Catholic I still wouldn’t support abortion because it is the extermination of a human being. The arguments for abortion including “its her body and her choice” or “its not a human because it hasn’t grown yet, just like a seed isnt a tree” make no sense to me because its NOT her body or her choice, its the body of the child shes giving birth to. She has as much “choice” in that decision as an SS officer does when he decides who gets to die today in the gas chamber. And while it’s true that it isn’t human being yet, it’s still going to grow into a human being and no human being will ever resemble that one. It was a unique product of one strain of DNA in the sperm cell joining a unique strain of DNA in the egg cell. You can never replicate it ever again.
I think a part of why people no sympathy towards aborted babies is because overpopulation creates an idea (of economic origin) that the more humans there are, the less our value is, the same way that paper has no virtually no value while gold, a much rarer substance, is prized and envied. But human beings cannot be thought of in purely economic standards because we have living souls and minds that are above material laws. Even an atheist or agnostic could agree on that.

I was with you, until you said, “…And while it’s true that it isn’t a human being yet…” The human being begins at the moment of conception, and that’s why abortion is wrong at any stage.

 

[polytropos]

You are correct. I also could not bring myself to support abortion as an atheist, and it is part of what pushed me back towards Catholicism - because I don’t want to align myself with those who are so willing to distort logic to justify killing, and I would not want to marry someone who would have an abortion. Might as well join a community that is morally functional.

People make utilitarian arguments for abortion (“the world will be overpopulated,” “it would have a bad life anyway,” “it’s better to be aborted than to be born to unloving parents”). The problem with these is that they don’t hold up in any other circumstance. We do not kill people to prevent overpopulation. We do not kill people who are living a “bad” life (and we should not judge whether someone’s life is worth living, anyway). We do not kill children whose parents do not show them proper love and care. It is completely absurd.

To call a fetus a nonperson is completely distant from self-evidence and intuition. If there were not a stake in abortion, no one would argue the stance (hence laws that judge the murder of a pregnant woman as two murders). Abortion advocates have started from the decision that they want to be able to have abortions and have said, “Hm, how can we justify killing a fetus? We must argue that it is not a person.” This is how all groups with power go about removing the rights of groups that they want to oppress.

The logical next step is to justify infanticide, which is what transhumanists are starting to do. And they are not exactly wrong, considering their assumptions: if it is morally permissible to kill a fetus for the sake of convenience, then it is morally permissible to kill an infant for the sake of convenience. The error is not the logic; it’s the fact that the result is not making them rethink their premises.

 

[Tyrael_the_Arch]

I was with you, until you said, “…And while it’s true that it isn’t a human being yet…” The human being begins at the moment of conception, and that’s why abortion is wrong at any stage.

see

Originally Posted by Catholic80
I applaud you for being pro-life but I disagree with your statement that an unborn child
It most certainly IS human! If it’s not a human being, then what is it? An egg and a sperm are not human, but at the moment of conception, a human being is created. That embryo is just in it’s earliest stages of development. Even after birth, we still develop up until death. An infant doesn’t look the same as a 5yo, a 12yo, an 18yo, a 25yo, and 85yo etc… But, that embryo looks exactly like it should in the human beings earliest days of life.

If you want to learn more about Roe v. Wade, here’s a good site: endroe.org and I find abort73.com to be a good site as well on the abortion issues.
I might have misquoted that, I meant to say that it isn’t a human being when its just a sperm cell and an egg cell, but I understand and agree with what you mean that a human being is a human being from the moment of conception
I’m very dumbfounded on why abortion has been turned into such a religious argument, which I think closes it off to a lot of other supporters that aren’t catholic or religious. It’s more of a humanist argument in my opinion
I hope the world will come to its senses

 

[Tyrael_the_Arch]

You are correct. I also could not bring myself to support abortion as an atheist, and it is part of what pushed me back towards Catholicism - because I don’t want to align myself with those who are so willing to distort logic to justify killing, and I would not want to marry someone who would have an abortion. Might as well join a community that is morally functional.

People make utilitarian arguments for abortion (“the world will be overpopulated,” “it would have a bad life anyway,” “it’s better to be aborted than to be born to unloving parents”). The problem with these is that they don’t hold up in any other circumstance. We do not kill people to prevent overpopulation. We do not kill people who are living a “bad” life (and we should not judge whether someone’s life is worth living, anyway). We do not kill children whose parents do not show them proper love and care. It is completely absurd.

To call a fetus a nonperson is completely distant from self-evidence and intuition. If there were not a stake in abortion, no one would argue the stance (hence laws that judge the murder of a pregnant woman as two murders). Abortion advocates have started from the decision that they want to be able to have abortions and have said, “Hm, how can we justify killing a fetus? We must argue that it is not a person.” This is how all groups with power go about removing the rights of groups that they want to oppress.

The logical next step is to justify infanticide, which is what transhumanists are starting to do. And they are not exactly wrong, considering their assumptions: if it is morally permissible to kill a fetus for the sake of convenience, then it is morally permissible to kill an infant for the sake of convenience. The error is not the logic; it’s the fact that the result is not making them rethink their premises.

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I hate when people use those arguments because it diminishes the value of life, I mean yeah, if the child is born and gets put up for adoption it will have a harder life than most not knowing its own parents, but at least its still a life.
There’s an interesting Old Norse book called the Havamal thats full of little poems about general life advice, like being polite and showing hospitality. There’s one that I think provides a good argument against abortion

More blest are the living than the lifeless,
'tis the living who come by the cow;
I saw the hearth-fire burn in the rich man’s hall
and himself lying dead at the door.

not to mention the countless biblical quotes that god formed us in the womb and knew our spirits before we were born. i like to think those passages are biblical predictions of our discovery of DNA and how reproduction works

 

[Portofino]

To call a fetus a nonperson is completely distant from self-evidence and intuition. If there were not a stake in abortion, no one would argue the stance (hence laws that judge the murder of a pregnant woman as two murders).

In the name of consistency, would you consider that a woman who is found to have performed an abortion on herself is guilty of first degree murder, and should face the penalties normally imposed for first degree murder?

I personally haven’t heard of any pro-lifers advocating that a woman who performs an abortion on herself should be given life in prison, or possibly a death sentence. I am not sure what to make of the fact that, though they believe that abortion constitutes the deliberate killing of an innocent human being, it should not incur life in prison. When abortion was illegal in the United States, I believe the potential incarceration penalty was measured in months, not in years.

My own view is that the criminalization of abortion is tantamount, in terms of enforcement, to the criminalization of suicide. A woman’s pregnancy, for one thing, is not visible to others for the first 12 weeks plus. It is a secret that she carries about with her, possibly a secret even from the man who impregnated her.

Regarding suicide, we try to persuade people not to do it, even though we acknowledge that there is little we can do to stop them, and even though the criminalization of suicide – though I think it exists, this idea of being arrested after a suicide attempt – is not feasible.

Then, as mentioned above, there is the fact that no one seems willing to impose life in prison, or death, on a woman guilty (say) of performing an abortion on herself. On some level, even by pro-lifers, there is a recognition that abortion – the deliberate termination of a pregnancy, a deliberately induced miscarriage – is not of the same nature as killing one’s child after he’s been born.

Regarding twisting logic to justify killing, though, it is fair to point out that this was the reason for Tolstoy’s rejection of the Russian Orthodox church, as it was one reason that Quakers and Anabaptists (forerunners of the Amish) rejected Catholicism – because they could not justify killing in the name of warfare, or criminal justice. They were against abortion, war, the death penalty, all of it. As one commentator puts it, “when Christ said ‘love your enemies’, I’m pretty sure he meant don’t kill them.”