Mary, please refer to post #21 in response to your comment. For me, the abortion issue is one of religious liberty, just as I support Catholic institutions’ right to deny women contraceptives in their health coverage because it violates these institutions’ right to religious expression. I don’t view the categories as arbitrary, but rather, based on religious teaching.I wonder what would have happened if the Old Americans had emplyed this thought process to the slavery matter. “Since we all disagree about the personhood or lack thereof of these slaves, why not let each family, slave-owner, and their pastor each make their own choice about whether or not to keep. kill, otherwise mistreat slaves?” What if the same had been left to the Germans to decide for themselves regarding the humanity of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the early 20th Century? While I might agree with you as regards gay marriage, abortion is a question of whether an individual being denied all rights, including life/existence, simply based on other peoples’ judgment that he is not “fully” or “truly” human should be protected. Since science cannot tell us when humanity can be said to be fully extant in a baby, the law ought to protect the entire life of a baby, from conception to senility. No arbitrary categories should be placed at any point in between to determine what we humans cannot.
I use those examples because it is obvious that one person is hurting another person. I know not all religions outlaw spousal abuse, or incestual relations or slavery. But these are morally repugnant things anyway.Your references to slavery, abusive spouses, and incestual relations, on the other hand, do not derive from any legitimate religious perspective, but rather from either distortions of religion or individual or group prejudices.
Not all 50 states require abortions to be done by licensed doctors. You don’t even have to be a M.D. Some states have zero regulations on abortuaries, so your abortuary can be germ filled and nasty and the state won’t do anything about it. Of course, all these left-wing states have six tons of regulations on people’s free speech - can’t protest or picket near an abortuary…Another point, actually a question: where do you get the information that abortions are performed by “unlicensed, untrained, and dangerous staff”? I thought the opposite was the case, namely that before abortion was legalized, many abortions were dangerous because untrained doctors or charlatans performed them.
In Judaism according to what I have read here, allows abortion during the first 40 days of the pregnancy, but did not mention anything about the soul entering the body or not!Wow, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the biggest in the world, and all three are different in their views in this matter. It sure complicates things for all parties when we talk about freedom of religion and the right to practice one’s religion according to the confines of that religion.