Democratic politician angry that letters on his pro-abortion voting record distributed by private group at local Catholic parishes

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Freddy said:
Let’s be clear here. I’m not asking if anyone thinks that it’s a good idea to allow a woman to choose to have an abortion. I’m asking if there is anyone who promotes abortion as being a good thing in itself. Which would mean suggesting that they are a good thing whether the woman wants one or not.

Clearly a nonsensical position.

Which would entail promoting abortions whether a woman wanted one or not.
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It might seem nonsensical to you Freddy, but, unfortunately, there are others who do want to see women aborting their children, even if the women wish to keep their babies.
I wonder if you might have missed the history of coerced abortion in China?
There are both groups and individuals pushing for one (or two) child policies in the west as well as in China.


In India, pressure to limit family size encouraged families, in a culture which prized male babies, to seek sex selective abortions>


"Equally unfortunately, despite the fall of the Gandhi government, the financial pressure on India from the World Bank and USAID to implement population control continued. By the early 1980s, four million sterilizations were being performed every year on India’s underclasses as part of a coercive two-children-per-family policy.

Since in rural India sons are considered essential to continue the family line and provide support for parents in their old age, this limit caused many families to seek means of disposing of infant daughters, frequently through drowning, asphyxiation, abandonment in sewers or garbage dumps, or incineration on funeral pyres. More recently the primary means of eliminating the less-desirable sex has become sex-selective abortion, skewing the ratio of the sexes so that 112 boys are born for every hundred girls in India (far beyond the natural ratio of 103 to 106), with the ratio even more skewed in some locations. A sense of the scale on which these murders were and are practiced, even just in the aspect of gendercide, can be gleaned from the fact that in India today there are 37 million more men than women."
Shifting to the west in the next post.
 
Support for coercive population control measures is not limited to China or India, of course. It has been taken up by Eugenicists and radical environmentalists. Consider Paul Erlich.
The most notorious pusher of mandatory population control measures was Paul Ehrlich. In his shabby 1968 book The Population Bomb , he recommended the establishment of a huge Federal Department of Population and Environment (DPE), which would have the legal power to dictate how many children couples could have.5

Two years later, in his more detailed book Ecoscience, he wrote, “It has been concluded that mandatory population control laws, even those requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under our existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently compelling to endanger the society. Many consider the situation already serious enough to justify some forms of compulsion.” His recommended measures included mandatory abortion and sterilization, adding sterilizing agents to water supplies or staple foods, and the establishment of an armed international force with the power to enforce these measures. All of this was meant to lead to what Ehrlich called a “Planetary Regime.”6 In 2013, Ehrlich claimed that “nobody has the right to as many children as they want.”
Source: https://www.hli.org/resources/forced-abortion/
 
Yes, saving souls is the critical issue. You are missing the fact that how one votes can be mortally sinful resulting in the loss of souls. How we respond or do not respond to the preeminent moral issue of our day can be mortally sinful. Preaching the truth about this issue by handing out flyers at church, especially those churches that neglect to preach it from the pulpit is instructing the ignorant and a spiritual work of mercy. Denying the distribution of it is the opposite no matter how it might make one feel.
 
Yes, I did. I meant it. It is my understanding. People no more ‘want’ abortion than they want any other medical or surgical procedure. I agree that this does not mean abortion is morally the same as other procedures, but that is not what we are discussing.

With your approach, Deacon Jeff, are you successful in winning over people who support access to safe and legal abortion?
 
AlbMagno said:
I understand that we should not demonize pro-choice people in a discussion, but at the same time, it’s also true that pro-choice people usually make this kind of constructs in which basically nothing is an abortion and if you say so, you are losing credibility.
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Well I am one who believes women who have abortions and those who assist her prior to viability should be able to do so without the state stopping them. I agree that at least after a few days have passed the cells resulting from fertilisation are alive and will develop into a human being who will be recognised as such at the point of birth. Why can’t Catholics discuss the issue with me?
AlbMagno said:
It’s a bit like the “shove Religion down your throat” excuse that is used in the Internet. If you desire something “good” (not changing the woman’s life) by doing something in between (abortion) you are permitting that path, and therefore at least indirectly wanting it.
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The word ‘want’, for example, in the sentence ‘I’ll want you for all time’ is being used in its usual sense. You are using it to mean ‘willing to permit without the imposition of legal sanctions’. That is a new and not widely accepted use of the word.
 
Yes, but in the case brought by (name removed by moderator), the parent is not merely permitting an abortion as something that could happen but actually wanting the abortion to happen (to not make the girl a mother yet, but still).
 
Freddy said:
And we have a bone of contention as regards when we can class that which a woman is carrying as a baby. It certainly is a day before birth but it certainly isn’t a day after conception.
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That contention exists only in your mind. The very notion of it being a contentious point is probably one of the biggest points of contention you actually have with people here.

(PS a new human life begins at the moment of conception. 🙂 Whether you’d like to call this a human baby, human child, or simply human offspring is up to you. But it’ll simply be a battle of bald assertions if you come in claiming a baby “certainly” doesn’t exist from the moment of conception. In every meaningful sense (ie short of semantics about age and life stage, eg embryo-foetus-newborn-toddler-preteen-adolescent-adult-senior) I’d take the position that a baby does exist from the moment of conception. That’s what ‘conception’ refers to. What has been conceived is the human child, or in common language, little baby.)

And from here on out we can ride the merry-go-round if you like. Or just not bother.
 
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MNathaniel said:
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Freddy:
And we have a bone of contention as regards when we can class that which a woman is carrying as a baby. It certainly is a day before birth but it certainly isn’t a day after conception.
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That contention exists only in your mind. The very notion of it being a contentious point is probably one of the biggest points of contention you actually have with people here.

(PS a new human life begins at the moment of conception. 🙂 Whether you’d like to call this a human baby, human child, or simply human offspring is up to you. But it’ll simply be a battle of bald assertions if you come in claiming a baby “certainly” doesn’t exist from the moment of conception. In every meaningful sense (ie short of semantics about age and life stage, eg embryo-foetus-newborn-toddler-preteen-adolescent-adult-senior) I’d take the position that a baby does exist from the moment of conception. That’s what ‘conception’ refers to. What has been conceived is the human child, or in common language, little baby.)

And from here on out we can ride the merry-go-round if you like. Or just not bother.
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Then we disagree. More to the point, I would say that the majority of women who have abortions would also disagree. It’s their opinion that counts. Not mine.
 
To explain again: were the mother to be able to go back in time and change things she would prefer that there was no pregnancy to start with. She would regret what she sees as the ‘need’ for the abortion. She would not ‘want’ it.
 
Freddy said:
Then we disagree. More to the point, I would say that the majority of women who have abortions would also disagree. It’s their opinion that counts. Not mine.
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And I disagree with [these hypothetical thought constructs of other women] too. 🙂

And I disagree with your assertion that the only opinions that count are those of the mothers. It’s like saying the only opinion that counts about the treatment of slaves is that of the slave owners.
 
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FiveLinden said:
would ever ‘want a woman to have an abortion’ any more than we would ‘want a woman to have an appendectomy’.
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But I would want a woman to have an appendectomy if her appendix was close to bursting. Just because you never met anyone that wanted another to have an abortion does not mean they do not exist. A removed appendix does not require child support. The effect of the surgery does not extend for two decades.
 
FiveLinden said:
. So, by the way, does calling people ‘pre-born baby assassins’.
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Yes, but you compared a baby to an appendix. No one is pro-choice slavery (anymore). If slaves were tools, one could be. If we see them as human, we cannot be. So, while the terms may be crass, both assassins and appendix, the at least show the difference between pro-abortion and anti-abortion. When does one have human rights? When is one even “one.”? The secular argument for first week abortions cannot be used after about four or five months. The humanity is quite clear. Even survival outside the womb becomes possible.

So where do you draw the line? If you draw it wrong, you commit murder. If you draw it at all, then the mere fact of that drawing a line is reckless endangerment of lives that have human rights. That is my secular argument.
 
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It’s honestly simple science. And up until just a few decades ago nearly all scientists understood life began at conception. And if you snuff out human life, whether one day after conception, one day before birth or anywhere in between, it is murder.

And your contention that it “becomes” a baby somewhere in between is sheer subjective nonsense that has no basis in science and subject to change on a whim and human opinion each day.

This is why you cannot have an honest discussion unless you admit the obvious rather than obfuscate behind your own conscience.
 
Freddy said:
Then we disagree. More to the point, I would say that the majority of women who have abortions would also disagree. It’s their opinion that counts. Not mine.
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Opinions do matter because they inform votes and policies.
It seem that Mnthaniel is offering readers facts which might assist them in forming their opinions. If previously, their opinions were based upon misunderstandings, then having access to these facts may help them to change their opinions.
 
Of course. And in that mythical world, she wold not be pregnant. But, now that she carries a life, when she seeks to procure an abortion, she is wanting to kill her child more than she is wanting to sustain his life.

A mother of a five year old might regret becoming a parent also, and, if she could go back in time, might not have become involved with the father of her chlld. However, having created this human life, if is a crime for her to take it, no matter how badly she wishes it was not a reality.
To choose to kill is to decide that killing is a good, relative to your other options.
 
pnewton said:
Yes, but you compared a baby to an appendix.
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No, I didn’t. I compared two medical procedures to illustrate my point that invasive medical procedures are not ‘wanted’ in themselves, using the example of an appendectomy only because it is clearly not a procedure anyone would ‘want’.

This is the sort of response that undermines rational dialogue between those with different views on the legalisation of abortion. You will find a summary of my views earlier in the thread that answers your questions about ‘humanity’ and ‘viability’. I should add that on moral issues I follow situation ethics. There are no ‘lines’.
 
JoeFreedom said:
And up until just a few decades ago nearly all scientists understood life began at conception
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‘Life’ exists in both sperm and ovum. No modern scientist, thinking clearly, has ever thought ‘life’ begins at conception. What you mean, I think, is that ‘a seperate human being having human rights equal to any born person’ begins at conception. (Leaving aside the potential for the ‘human being’ to separate into twins or triplets)
 
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