Account: bishop says "You can't be an authentic Catholic and pro-abortion." --As pro-abortion "Catholic" in U.S. takes the public eye

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https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...heir-religion-says-catholic-congressman-13406

There’s truth to this. Everything is so polarized. I’ve been guilty of siding with one party over other too. Been trying to stay away from news. Well still read stuff off social media and do watch ewtn news occasionally but used to always be watching MSM. Still need to tune it down. Twitter is so awful, usually blind hatred agaisnt someone else. Since when did agreeing with one thing a person does means you agree with everything they do?

I kind of want to sit this election out. Voting for a person who claims he’s Catholic yet very pro abortion and from the party that has really cracked down on religious freedom, especially during the current epidemic. Or vote for someone who had appointed pro life justices but his persona is so terribly. Who’s openly demonstrated toxicity towards women (Hollywood access tape), who is very narcissistic and ego driven. Who doesn’t care much for environment or immigrants either…

Like… I hate both options? Always told myself 3rd party was waste of vote. I feel like America loses either way. I wonder if I should just forgoe politics and focus on trying to change things socially. Change the culture, the politics should follow. But just division, division, division. I’m sick of it. It’s not just Rs and Ds. It’s everywhere. Catholic vs protestant. Christian vs atheist. Black vs white. The list goes on and on…
 
vz71 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
You just distorted the claim to make it sound inaccurate.
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That’s a pretty serious accusation.

Let’s examine the facts.
On the one hand we have a claim that Republicans have done nothing for the pro life cause.
On the other, we have demonstrated results of two new supreme court justices that are pro life.

I fail to see any distortion on my part.
Your accusation is misguided.
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You are making this way more complicated than it needs to be. The original claim was:

“literally doing nothing about the whole abortion problems”

In your refutation of this claim, you shortened the claim to:

“literally doing nothing”

so that you could count the appointment of Justices as “something”. This is a distortion of the claim, which was specific to abortions. It is not yet clear if these appointments are going to have the desired effect. Let’s see if the number of abortions is dramatically reduced. That would be “something.”
 
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Exactly the reason I skipped right past the box with the presidential candidate in 2016. Neither major candidate was worthy of the office.
 
The ACLU sees a connection between Supreme Court appointees (and appointees in the lower courts as well) and pro life legislative success.


And, in the Louisiana Case, we see the ACLU contending: (link at bottom)
" Recently the ACLU of Louisiana filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights challenging a law that would decimate access to abortion in Louisiana.

The stakes could not be higher.

This will be the first abortion case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court since President Trump’s appointment of conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. If the Louisiana law is upheld, it would upend the precedent set by a similar case out of Texas just four years ago and threaten the fundamental right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade."
Judges matter.
https://www.laaclu.org/en/news/most...ht-now-louisiana-law-heading-us-supreme-court
A further explanation of the significance from VOX

 
But the ultimate question is will abortions be reduced. We hope so, but that is not certain. If the general public is not supportive of a law, that law will not be obeyed. That is why I am suspicious of this top-down approach to the problem.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
But the ultimate question is will abortions be reduced. We hope so, but that is not certain. If the general public is not supportive of a law, that law will not be obeyed. That is why I am suspicious of this top-down approach to the problem.
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I’m not so sure about this Leaf. Even if some people choose to break the law, it is likely that some will not become lawbreakers. Thus there will be fewer abortions than might have occurred without delegalization. It appears that we agree that a reduction in abortions is something to be hoped for.
The article below, has reviewed studies and shows strong linkages between legal status and number of abortions, in multiple countries.

 
There are too many variables in the culture of other countries to conclude that the same correlation will hold if laws are passed in this country. As we saw in prohibition, unless the culture is supportive of the law, it will ultimately be a failure. That is why I think the culture needs to change first. One way to do that would be for pro-life people to show more societal support for childbirth by providing state-funded prenatal care and delivery services to all pregnant women as a matter of course. When people see that the state is more supportive of the role of mothers, they may be less troubled by the prospect of bearing a child.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
As we saw in prohibition, unless the culture is supportive of the law, it will ultimately be a failure.
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If it saves one life, then I think we might agree that it is not a failure.
I’m sure we also agree that the culture needs to change (and that culture is constantly changing). One aspect of culture is the law. Changing the law is one way to work to change the culture.
How many lives are we willing to sacrifice while we wait for people to decide that they are now materially comfortable enough to choose not to kill that child?
The moral issue involves the justification for killing. The law is one way of saying that this killing is unjustifiable. Yes, there will always be some who will justify the decision to kill.
By the way, the article linked above did not limit itself to other countries. It also discussed the United States. Ergo, multiple different countries with different cultures and a similar trend of reduction in abortions when the laws are more restrictive. It discusses controlling for variables. It argues that, in the U.S., as in other country studies, after controlling for variables, ones sees a reduction in abortions when laws are more restrictive.
 
farronwolf said:
. Did the Church or it’s leaders take that position? If not, why do they take it on the issue of abortion?
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That is a good question. To be sure, the idea the life began at conception is not something the Church has always believed. As with all things, those that did not agree were not held accountable for things that were not known at that time.

Also, I think it important to remember that not all slavery is the same. Chattel slavery is not the same as indentured slavery. Even from the beginning though, the Church taught that those who were slaves (not the chattel slavery of the New World) were also brother and sisters to their masters, who were also called to servanthood. It was a different thing than what we came to see in the United States.
 
Obviously the pro-abortion contingent of U.S. Senators think that juducial appointments are important. That is why they so vociferously oppose any nominee who might have the slightest pro-life sympathy, pulling out all the stops to demonize such candidates.

It should be noted that abortion proponents did not wait for the culture to change. Rather they actively sought a case to bring to the SCOTUS for the sole purpose of making abortion legal in every state. Justice Blackmun was determined to provide the justification. He thought that a court ruling would end the debate. He was wrong.
 
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Exactly what I did. Hillary just turned me off and I felt and still.do Trump is morally unfit. I also fear we in getting a Supreme Court more likely to side with us on abortion is also likely to side with those supporters of restrictions on voting ect. It’s like if you don’t support my rights then I’m not going to support yours. When it comes to moral issues true conversion is the best way not legislating it. Two things converted me to be opposed to abortion. Conversion and science.
 
Bingo!! There is nothing in the DNA of a Republican.or Democrat that makes them pro abortion or anti abortion. It’s politics plain and simple. Both parties are locked in to a position that almost prevents someone to run for anything but a local office who doesn’t support the party on the abortion issue. Republicans are scared to lose one block of voters and Democrats are scared to lose another block.
 
Ralph said:
There is nothing in the DNA of a Republican.or Democrat that makes them pro abortion or anti abortion.
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An interesting assertion. An article in The Atlantic notes significant percentages of Anti Abortion voters who have, in the past, identified as either Democrats or Independents. Their willingness to take that position to the voting booth and return our current president to office could be key to further pro life judicial appointments in the next four years.
From the article:
" The 2017 Pew survey found that 22 percent of Democrats said that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. A larger percentage of Independent voters, a group that the Democratic Party may target in the midterms, said the same at 38 percent."
source:

 
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jtwp5 said:
Like… I hate both options? Always told myself 3rd party was waste of vote.
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Voting third party is certainly less of a waste than not voting at all. But if you do decide to vote third party, consider the American Solidarity Party.
I feel like America loses either way. I wonder if I should just forgoe politics and focus on trying to change things socially. Change the culture, the politics should follow. But just division, division, division. I’m sick of it. It’s not just Rs and Ds. It’s everywhere. Catholic vs protestant. Christian vs atheist. Black vs white. The list goes on and on…
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What we really need to do is ditch our plurality voting system, i.e. “whoever gets the most votes wins even if they didn’t get a majority.” This system strongly incentivizes a two-party system like our own, which in turn incentivizes polarization. Now, plurality voting doesn’t always lead to a two-party system, and two-party systems don’t always lead to polarization, but they sure help out.

While one could argue in favor of some kind of proportional representation or MMP (sorta a mixture of our current system and proportional representation), I think simple Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff Voting would be the easiest to implement, and does seem to be gaining some popularity.
 
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