Catholics Can Be Pro-Choice?

[Ender]

I in no way advocate or defend a society that is indifferent to murder in general or abortion in particular.

I need to understand why you support laws punishing murder but oppose laws that would punish abortion. Do you believe that an abortion terminates the life of a human being? If it is, how is it not also a form of murder?

Now this is completely foreign to me. The law is a teacher? What does that mean?

The law conveys certain basic societal attitudes and helps shape those attitudes by implying if it is legal it is also moral and if it is illegal it is also immoral.

I have no firsthand experience, but I would be fairly confident asserting that pregnancy is a vulnerable, emotional, and complex situation.

This can also describe people for whom caring for the children they already have is an enormous burden. Should they be allowed to terminate the lives of those children to ease their burdens?

A prohibition on abortion would not prohibit having one, only performing one?

The heaviest punishments are applicable solely to the abortionists, not the mothers.

The past is utterly irrelevant to current social institutions and practices? If that is what you believe, perhaps we should start another thread on that question (although I am surprised that any Catholic would believe that).

It is either a good idea or a bad idea to ban abortions today. That determination is in no way whatever influenced by actions (good or bad) that were committed in the past.

You oppose murder and apparently accept laws that prohibit it yet you oppose laws that would prohibit abortion even though an abortion takes the life of an innocent person. How do you explain supporting laws that protect the lives of some people while opposing laws that protect the lives of others?

Ender

 

[LCMS_No_More]

Do any pro-lifers notice a trend? Every time there’s an election, you vote pro-life, and then at the next election you get to vote pro-life AGAIN because nothing was actually done about abortion.

How many Republicans do you have to go through before you realize it’s campaign rhetoric?

The day abortion becomes illegal is the day the Republican Party comes to an end. Really.

Mike

You’re absolutely right and no amount of mental masturbation will change that.

 

[East_and_West]

Hi everyone. Please look at the quote below and tell me what, if anything, is wrong with it. Thanks!

What’s wrong with it is ther person’s understanding of conscience. Yes the conscience is our moral authority. But conscience has to be FORMED. It has to formed according to the teachings of the Church.

 

[Ender]

Do any pro-lifers notice a trend? Every time there’s an election, you vote pro-life, and then at the next election you get to vote pro-life AGAIN because nothing was actually done about abortion.

How many Republicans do you have to go through before you realize it’s campaign rhetoric?

The day abortion becomes illegal is the day the Republican Party comes to an end. Really.

This battle is a tug-of-war. Until sufficient forces can be added to the pro-life side they cannot prevail no matter how resolute and serious they are. It is a question of numbers and as long as Catholics continue to support pro-abortion politicians there will be insufficient numbers to succeed. This is not the fault of those who labor on the pro-life side but of those who continue to send reinforcements to the pro-abortion side.

Ender

 

[Green_Tea]

Ender,

To address your points in the order presented:

— The case of standard homicide and the case of abortion are very different. Only the most egregious form of convenient reductionism can equate the complex set of concerns and issues surrounding the two forms of killing. In this thread, I will be talking about abortion. If you would like to start a thread on the specific legal responses to various sorts of homicides, feel free.

— The law is not a teacher in the sense you indicated. I do not know anyone who believes that “legality” is equivalent to “morality.” The law does not require a person to love their neighbor and even permits hatred, if you are so inclined. No one interprets that to mean that love is not a moral duty and hatred is morally permissible.

— As I mentioned, I simply do not accept your thesis that social institutions and practices are not influenced by and determined in relation to their history. The past does matter, in my mind. On this point, I think it is best that we agree to disagree; I am not prepared to launch into an entire philosophical exposition of the importance of tradition, the nature of history, etc.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ender,

To address your points in the order presented:

— The case of standard homicide and the case of abortion are very different. Only the most egregious form of convenient reductionism can equate the complex set of concerns and issues surrounding the two forms of killing. In this thread, I will be talking about abortion. If you would like to start a thread on the specific legal responses to various sorts of homicides, feel free.

So you say.

Can you explain why the killing of an adult male, able to defend himself, is murder, but an innocent, helpless child is not?

Can you explain why circumstances like premeditation and serial killing make a crime more henious – except when they apply to the most innocent and helpless victims?

 

[Ridgerunner]

But, a “yes” vote to pro-life is a “no” vote to Democratic social programs that ALSO potentially save a lot of lives.

What programs are those? Since Lyndon Johnson’s day, the only significant program that actually helped the truly needy was the earned income credit, and that was Reagan’s.

In the last decades, including at times when the Dems controlled congress and the white house and when they didn’t, they have produced nothing of any significance that really helps the poor. Even now, the two big Dem proposals are some kind of socialized healthcare and free college tuition. Completely aside from the fact that they’re vague, unlikely to be enacted and don’t really deal with the root problems afflicting either medicine or education, (a good part of which is government itself) they’re middle class vote-buying programs, not programs designed to help the truly needy. And I think experience has taught us that very few of the wonderful-sounding “changes” politicians serve up are actually “as advertised”. Mostly they’re a handful of smoke.

But even if the Dems really did have a record (after Johnson) of passing all kinds of beneficial social programs, (and some question whether Johnson’s were beneficial or not, on balance) there’s no equivalency between those and killing children. If some politician proposed eugenically killing all children who showed signs of any defect fifteen minutes following birth, you would not even consider voting for them no matter what else they espoused. The current Dem contenders for the presidency both opposed the partial birth abortion ban and can be reasonably expected, if elected, to attempt to remove it, allowing children to be killed fifteen seconds before birth even if they had no defects at all.

No matter how many promises of free stuff politicians make, they rarely deliver on them, and can reasonably be disbelieved. But when politicians say they are for “choice” (killing) and act on it in every way, one needs to believe them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ender,

— The case of standard homicide and the case of abortion are very different. Only the most egregious form of convenient reductionism can equate the complex set of concerns and issues surrounding the two forms of killing.

Every legally-recognized homicide case is also very different from every other one. Every single one of them involves a complex set of concerns and issues. Yet the law forbids them. The distinction you attempt to create is a false one in this respect.

 

[ReginaHenderson]

One can not be pro-choice in the matter of abortion and be a good Catholic . That is because abortion is murder , specifically murder of a an unborn child. Do to the fact at a baby has a soul form the moment of conception onward and has done nothing evil killing him would be murder. There for being pro-choice is being pro-murder. Committing, or being part in a murder is in no way exercising free will in accordance to one’s conscience. Thus it is indefensible and should not be a choice under any government

Pax Christi Vobiscum ,

Regina Henderson.

 

[RobbyS]

Ender,

To address your points in the order presented:

— The case of standard homicide and the case of abortion are very different. Only the most egregious form of convenient reductionism can equate the complex set of concerns and issues surrounding the two forms of killing. In this thread, I will be talking about abortion. If you would like to start a thread on the specific legal responses to various sorts of homicides, feel free.

— The law is not a teacher in the sense you indicated. I do not know anyone who believes that “legality” is equivalent to “morality.” The law does not require a person to love their neighbor and even permits hatred, if you are so inclined. No one interprets that to mean that love is not a moral duty and hatred is morally permissible.

— As I mentioned, I simply do not accept your thesis that social institutions and practices are not influenced by and determined in relation to their history. The past does matter, in my mind. On this point, I think it is best that we agree to disagree; I am not prepared to launch into an entire philosophical exposition of the importance of tradition, the nature of history, etc.

I prefer to compare abortion and infanticide, which have the same object, to get rid of an unwanted child, and each by violence. The first is legal, the second illegal, and the arbitrariness of this causes many of us to fear that infanticide will eventually be legalized, case by case, to the point where the exception becomes the rule.

You do not think that people equate legality with morality? We have the most extreme abortion law in the world outside the communist states and it is accepted because a majority of the lawyers on the Supreme Court say that the Constitution gives women the legal right to have an abortion. This trumps the laws of all the states that said something different and went against popular opinion in 1973, more than 75% of which then said abortion is immoral. There is nothing in the latter or the conext of the constitution that confirms this, yet we defer to the opinion --the morality of this majority. Why?
Because as William F. Buckley Jr. once said, because to the American people the Supreme Court is the American papacy. We defer to its judgements as the people of Europe onced defered to that bishop of Rome. Well, modern bishops of Rome have said again and again: abortion is immoral and --by implication–the abortion law of the United States is immoral. But who do we listen to? The law is a teacher and it teaches that the more than one million abortions each year are moral acts.

 

[mmortal03]

You are fiddling with the common use of the term and it’s not really helpful. If I understand you you oppose abortion but don’t want to see it made illegal, therefore you see yourself as both pro-life and pro-choice. If that’s the case then you need to come up with a new term rather than distort the common understanding of the terms pro-life and pro-choice … which I must admit are not particularly helpful terms to begin with. I can see there being three positions: people who oppose abortion and want it to be illegal, people who support abortion and want it to be legal, and people who oppose abortion but don’t want it to be illegal. That last one seems to be where you belong.

I think actually you are the one confusing the common usages of these terms. There are many Democrats (don’t assume that I am one) who are personally against abortion but think it should remain legal (there are even some Republicans who think that way, too). Whether or not these individuals EXCLUSIVELY apply the term pro-choice to themselves or not probably varies from person to person, but I think your comment on what are the common usages is off. It may be true that technically there is a category of pro-choice individuals who are some evil people who like to have abortions for fun, if you see what I mean, but on the contrary, I don’t think the term in reality actually means “I like abortion”. I actually would doubt many individuals who are pro-choice would say that they like people having them and want more of them to happen. In the same respect, pro-abortion is NOT the same as pro-choice.

 

[mmortal03]

The big lie told by the pro-choice group is that if something is a choice, all alternatives are moral

I don’t think the pro-choice group is arguing that all choices are equally moral at all.

 

[mmortal03]

So if he kills his whole family, you would oppose having him arrested?

You would oppose laws against murder?

People should be able to choose, even in this most serious of choices. In that respect, I am “pro-choice.”

Man, you guys are just building up straw man arguments, proposing questions based in false dilemmas and making unfounded assumptions right and left, and then playing dumb when Green Tea won’t play along with your logical fallacies. This is just ridiculous. I expect better of this forum.

 

[mmortal03]

The terms are mortal enemies of each other.

One cannot because, the common understanding of the term “pro-choice” is “pro-abortion” or “pro-death” which is directly opposite the term “pro-life”. Common usage in a given linguistic system is an important and necessary consideration.

That is complete nonsense. That may be the “common usage” on this board, but it is definitely not the common usage across all the common parties involved across the spectrum of political beliefs.

 

[mmortal03]

This logic demotes the Church from Moral Authority to Suggestion Giver.

And so therefore, the logical end result of that would be that we should have a Catholic government enforcing that Moral Authority on the population, instead of just giving us their suggestions. And with that, you have ended the debate, Spirithound. We can move along now. /sarcasm

 

[mmortal03]

Shouldn’t the unborn child have at least that much? If you don’t know when he becomes human, shouldn’t you err on his side, give him the benefit of the doubt?

I have always liked this pro-life argument the best, because I have seen it derived in a secular manner, but I am now reconsidering it, and don’t think it always holds, depending on what stage of development the fetus is in. To “give him the benefit of the doubt” would have to assume that the fetus wants to live. I don’t think there is any consciousness or feeling there before a certain stage that can be assumed to be aware and of any interest in the matter of whether it lives or dies. Furthermore, if you remove the Christian idea of there being a soul at conception, then there would be no soul to save, and therefore fetus would never even have had a conscious life (or soul) to begin with if the abortion was carried out early enough.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I don’t think the pro-choice group is arguing that all choices are equally moral at all.

Then what is their argument when they say “abortion is a choice?”

Murder is a choice. Rape is a choice. Bank robbery is a choice. Should people be allowed to make those choices as they wish, with no consequences?

 

[vern_humphrey]

I have always liked this pro-life argument the best, because I have seen it derived in a secular manner, but I am now reconsidering it, and don’t think it always holds, depending on what stage of development the fetus is in. To “give him the benefit of the doubt” would have to assume that the fetus wants to live. I don’t think there is any consciousness or feeling there before a certain stage that can be assumed to be aware and of any interest in the matter of whether it lives or dies. Furthermore, if you remove the Christian idea of there being a soul at conception, then there would be no soul to save, and therefore fetus would never even have had a conscious life (or soul) to begin with if the abortion was carried out early enough.

So, can a man under anethesia be said to “want” anything, including to live? Can a person with Alzheimer’s be said to “want” to live?

 

[Ender]

To “give him the benefit of the doubt” would have to assume that the fetus wants to live. I don’t think there is any consciousness or feeling there before a certain stage that can be assumed to be aware and of any interest in the matter of whether it lives or dies.

I wonder if you have any conception of where this argument would be taken if it was accepted by society. Do you seriously want to give one person the right to decide whether another person lives or dies based on assumptions of what the victim might prefer? Do you really want a person to lose his rights to the protection of the law when he is no longer capable of rational thought? You may wish to open that door to allow abortions but once you have opened it you cannot close it again against those who would wish to expand the list of victims beyond the unborn.

Ender

 

[vern_humphrey]

I wonder if you have any conception of where this argument would be taken if it was accepted by society. Do you seriously want to give one person the right to decide whether another person lives or dies based on assumptions of what the victim might prefer? Do you really want a person to lose his rights to the protection of the law when he is no longer capable of rational thought? You may wish to open that door to allow abortions but once you have opened it you cannot close it again against those who would wish to expand the list of victims beyond the unborn.

Ender

Amen.

My wife is a nurse, and has worked in nursing homes all her life. You can walk down the hallway and see dozens of people who would be ticketed for a quick death if that standard were adopted.

I recall one fellow in his 50s. The day after he graduated from high school, he and his friends went swimming. He dove into shallow water, broke his neck, and spent the rest of his life in nursing homes, paralized from the neck down. Think how much money would be saved if people like this were quietly euthanized!

And tell me if euthansia isn’t coming to a nursing home near you in the near future if we don’t change our ways.