Does the Vatican endorse a Presidential candidate?

[SpiritMeadow]

=Neil_Anthony;3459755]Dear SpiritMeadow,
I haven’t seen you post for a while. I hope you’ve been doing well.

Doing quite well thanks. I just needed a good emmersion in reality and needed to get away from this strange place.

I’ve been wondering for ages why people call this a religious issue, when to me it’s always been a human rights issue. Thanks for explaining that… I guess some people think its about whether a fetus has a soul? Of course then it would be wrong to impose our unproven ideas upon others in the form of laws. I think many of us who support abortion laws support them because we want embryonic people to be protected… mainly because we’re all very happy that we were not killed in the womb and we don’t think its fair for other’s lives to be cut off before they even get to experience life. That’s why we think it belongs in the realm of law… not just because of religious theories about a soul.

I do think its very suseptible to being looked at as purely a human rights issue. But it is unusual in that to save one you can and often do do significant harm to another at the same time. This is the dilemma. It is why the courts struggled with the concept of personhood, and ended up calling it “potential life”. I see the Roe v. Wade thing as mostly a deep struggle to come to grips with a very difficult issue. I am loathe to substitute my personal beliefs here. Perhaps some day, and I believe it will happen, such things will not occur because all agree that it is not necessary. All children will be welcomed to a world community. Pregnancy no doubt will occur when it is desired and at no other time. But we must work with imperfect beings at the present.

It’s so painful to read this, that people will think that I oppose abortion because I do not trust women to make their own decisions In fact I think it is men who often want their girlfriend to get the abortion… Also part of why some men are so shocked by abortion is that we hold such a high view of women that it’s literally stunning to conceive of a woman wanting an abortion. I suspect few women really want them, but feel they have no choice. I think a vulnerable woman would have a lot easier time refusing to listen to a controlling husband/boyfriend ordering her to get an abortion if it was illegal… I hope anyway.

I doubt there is a good deal one can extract from some numbers. Obviously there are nearly as many different situations as there are abortions. The whole range of desire for one to no other choice is surely met. But I do conclude, I believe that in the end this is a woman’s decision. My husband does not agree I can assure you. Every means to support women in ending the need for abortion should be worked toward.

I have to add that it isn’t only a moral choice faced by women. It’s very scary for a man to find out that the woman he doesn’t really love might be pregnant by him. Of course not as scary as it is for the woman, but the temptation to do something wrong is there for the man too… in his case the temptation to encourage her to do the wrong thing. It’s not right to compare this to the situation a woman is in when pregnant, but still, don’t think that men will never face the moral dilemma at all.

Agreed

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I have a problem with what many people say of not wanting to force our opinions on others and legislate morals.
One problem with that: any law you make does that! I mean can a person robbing the bank be allowed to decide whether the bank clerk lives or dies based upon their own opinion of righ and wrong. If you say murder is wrong and punishable; are you not legislating to others what to do? Abortion is in the same sense. We are saying to people, no you can not murder your children, just like the robber cannot murder the bank teller.

No, they are not the same. Most laws are not passed to reflect any moral law at all. They are there to insure a reasonable society wherein people can depend on property and the norms of business not being interferred with. Abortion is an issue that may or may not be morally wrong, and any such law impinges on the rights of one known person on behalf of a fetus which has yet to be legally declared a person.

Your are claiming they are doing wrong. The law says they are not. Whom are you protecting? not the woman surely. You would control the use of her body against her will.

Scenario: should we legalize drugs so people can get free needles and not transmit Hep C? I mean we may help many drug users cut down on the risk of catch a chronic disease and save lives by permitting drug use… and hey its their bodies ( I say this more than the abortion even where one kills another; destroys another’s body).

Yes you may an excellent argument why we should legalize drugs. Thanks. Additionally it would remove a major amount of violence in our country as well. Another bonus.

Also, those numbers of deaths reported at the Roe v Wade trial were inflated; Dr. Benard Nathenson who has become prolife admitted that is what they did and also how at the time legalization did not save women’s lives, more like better hospital treatment and antibiotics emerging. The same abortionists who were illegal now set up sho illegally.

I cannot understand your sentences, they are not complete. What has the number of deaths due to illegal abortions have to do with your argument? The same abortionists…is where I can’t make out what you are trying to say.

Another point: If you have noticed, places that have made very restricting abortion laws or have kicked out abortion mills have seen strong cuts in number of abortions and not some rapid increase in illegal abortions or rapid increase in maternal death. Restricting and removing abortion mills does work (Clinton really had nothing to do with Abortion going down in the 90’s; it was local legislation and drop in abortion mills).

your argument here is without merit. Abortion is legal in the ENTIRE country. you are not required to seek an abortion only in your state of residence. States that have adopted restricted laws find their abortion rates going down because women are going to other states, usually the closest one. They have no need to visit untrained unlicensed ally abortionists.

[/QUOTE]

 

[CapIV]

pffft. Who cares about the law?

According to Augustine, “An unjust law seems to be no law at all!” Therefore, we need not follow it. The allowance of abortion is unjust. I don’t care if the government says that abortions are legal. The fact that abortion is the destruction of an unborn child makes it an unjust law.

I find anybody who rationalizes infanticide to be either uninformed, or completely sick.

Theft and murder will happen regardless of the law, that doesn’t mean they should be legalized. Abortion will happen regardless of the law, that doesn’t mean it ought to be permitted.

Seriously, go take a biology class or something. Life begins at conception.

 

[LittleOne1]

No, they are not the same. Most laws are not passed to reflect any moral law at all. They are there to insure a reasonable society wherein people can depend on property and the norms of business not being interferred with. Abortion is an issue that may or may not be morally wrong, and any such law impinges on the rights of one known person on behalf of a fetus which has yet to be legally declared a person.
I am sorry, but you fail to understand philosophy of law. Any law that is made, even when ordered to a just society, is in fact legislating morals on people (whether we can steal, or commit murder, or destroy property, all have to do with telling people what is right and wrong, even with it being ordered to the creation of a fair and just society. On your last comment, you would have to say slave owners never did anything wrong because at the time, slaves were property. In fact, attempts to free them would be a violation of the rights of to property known persons (slaveowners) vs slaves that were not yet declared legal persons; something tells me most people would find your arguement untenable. As we well know laws that violated rights of minorities or women were unjust and human law is not the final say; God’s Law is! The killing of innocent human life is always wrong, and if fact the attempts to define personhood at birth or later, are so erroneous its comical/sad the attempts that are made. I wrote a twenty page paper critiquing those attempts because frankly they are twisted logic a fourth grader could see past.

Your are claiming they are doing wrong. The law says they are not. Whom are you protecting? not the woman surely. You would control the use of her body against her will.
Control the use of her body is not really us controling her body, but a function of nature. If a person says; cut my arm off because it is possesed, are we controling her body if we do not? And as we have seen, laws do not always follow what is morally correct as seen in history; so your arguement that says the law says its okay really is rather weak. Finally, you have assumed the philisophical position of dualism: in saying the body is “her body” you acknowledge two entities the woman (her mind) and a property of her’s, her body. The problem with this arguement is that it is manichean like; it is us the spirit and we walk around in the machine; our bodies (though manicheans were anti bodily pleasure so a slight different). Anyways, this heresy was long rejected by Christians. For further philisophical understanding; please read Dr. Bill May’s book “Catholic Bioethics.”

Yes you may an excellent argument why we should legalize drugs. Thanks. Additionally it would remove a major amount of violence in our country as well. Another bonus.
I guess you have never seen the destruction drug use does to people; you will be in for a sad reality check if you had one as a spouse or family member; many on this board can attest to this truth.

I cannot understand your sentences, they are not complete. What has the number of deaths due to illegal abortions have to do with your argument? The same abortionists…is where I can’t make out what you are trying to say.
What they have to do is with the myth that people thought thousands of people died from illegal abortions before 1973 every year when that was not the case:catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0005.html as you will read it was 250 a year; not ten thousand. If you read his book he tells you how the same abortionist who were doing illegal abortions at the time in the US before Roe v Wade; these so called “back ally” ones became the abortion providers after Roe v Wade.

your argument here is without merit. Abortion is legal in the ENTIRE country. you are not required to seek an abortion only in your state of residence. States that have adopted restricted laws find their abortion rates going down because women are going to other states, usually the closest one. They have no need to visit untrained unlicensed ally abortionists.
Not true; yes others go out of state, but many instead do not terminate their pregnancy. Maybe you can show evidence that proves this to be the case, when abortion has gone down nationally since the early nineties. And when I say abortions are really restricted in some states, you have to realize that some states have one or two clinics total. Ultimately, I wish to reiterate that your arguement basing right and wrong on what has been declared by law is definitely flawed. Laws are not absolute in their moral correctness and as we have seen history is flooded with examples of laws that were unjust and wrong, and we as a society have a duty to overturn them.