Fr. Pavone on the use of graphic images of abortion

[iamrefreshed]

Something I have not seen here is anyone trying to understand Karen. She has stated numerous times that she has issues with catholic teaching about abortion (although she is close to catholic teaching).

However, not one person here has once started a dialogue with Karen concerning catholic teaching.

Karen, I know you have stated a disagreement with catholic teaching, what may I ask are your sticking point(s)?

 

[Philothea53]

Pledge of Re-Commitment

I thank God today for the gift of my life and for the lives of my brothers and sisters.

I know I am responsible for the unborn who cannot speak for themselves.

I know that the most serious tragedy of our day is the tragedy of abortion.

Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, never to be forgetful of the unborn.

I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement and to never stop defending life until ALL my brothers and sisters are protected and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for ALL.

Amen

 

[seekerz]

Something I have not seen here is anyone trying to understand Karen. She has stated numerous times that she has issues with catholic teaching about abortion (although she is close to catholic teaching).

However, not one person here has once started a dialogue with Karen concerning catholic teaching.

Karen, I know you have stated a disagreement with catholic teaching, what may I ask are your sticking point(s)?

At risk of being accused of being a pro-choicer myself (for not chasing her away), I have just advised Karen to search the Moral Theology forum for information on the areas that seem to be sticking points for her.

It has been my observation that sometimes people who support abortion do not appreciate the difference between the Church’s stand on treatment of ectopic pregnancies, inevitable abortions or life-threatening complications of pregnancy as opposed to abortion-on-demand.

To be honest, for a long time I didn’t know my Church’s stand on those specific medical situations either. Which is why I think it may help Karen to find out the official teachings.

 

[Philothea53]

Something I have not seen here is anyone trying to understand Karen. She has stated numerous times that she has issues with catholic teaching about abortion (although she is close to catholic teaching).

However, not one person here has once started a dialogue with Karen concerning catholic teaching.

Karen, I know you have stated a disagreement with catholic teaching, what may I ask are your sticking point(s)?

There have been over 375 posts on this thread. Have you read them? I suspect not or you wouldn’t have said this. Much time was spent trying to get Karen to understand what the Church teaches and why. She chooses to disagree. Repeatedly. Stubbornly. Extremely.

Back up just a little bit to post #378 and read where Karen -]says/-] er, repeats, "I…understand what the Church teaches about what constitutes a direct abortion (illicit) and an “unintended consequence” (licit) in ectopic pregnancies. I don’t happen to agree with the reasoning given. "

Your charity is commendable however we too tried that route.

 

[KarenNC]

1.2 million children a year old killed. When we state that again 1.2 million children a year killed.

Per the CDC the number of abortions has been under 1.2 million since 1997 and under 900,000 since 1998.

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm#tab1

I’ve yet to see a violent TV show cause a child to spontaneously dismember and drop in the garbage can. That’s the reality of what is going on in this country. You can minimize all you want but that is what’s happening.

That is what is happening??? Okay, if you say so.

 

[seekerz]

There have been over 375 posts on this thread. Have you read them? I suspect not or you wouldn’t have said this. Much time was spent trying to get Karen to understand what the Church teaches and why. She chooses to disagree. Repeatedly. Stubbornly. Extremely.

Back up just a little bit to post #378 and read where Karen -]says/-] er, repeats, "I…understand what the Church teaches about what constitutes a direct abortion (illicit) and an “unintended consequence” (licit) in ectopic pregnancies. I don’t happen to agree with the reasoning given. "

Your charity is commendable however we too tried that route.

Sorry, it seems like many of us are typing at the same time. I had not seen her response to my post.

 

[KarenNC]

Karen, I know you have stated a disagreement with catholic teaching, what may I ask are your sticking point(s)?

Looks like we posted at the same time. I outlined my view on the Church teaching on ectopic pregnancy in the response to seekerz. My information comes from cuf.org/faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57 and I do realize that this is not an absolute teaching, but appears to be fairly standard.

It is primarily an objection to tying the hands of physicians as to what procedures are available to them on what appears to me to be semantics, and not following the principle of doing the least harm possible in a very tragic and unfortunate situation.

That said, my objections or agreements with Catholic teaching concerning in which situations abortion is licit really have no bearing on whether or not it is appropriate to show these images to young children. If you want to get into a discussion on why I disagree with the Church on a specific issue, we might want to either PM or start a separate thread. This one is long enough

 

[Philothea53]

Per the CDC the number of abortions has been under 1.2 million since 1997 and under 900,000 since 1998.

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm#tab1
.

It is a fact known to those who are involved in the prolife struggle, that the CDC knows almost nothing about what goes on in this country about abortion. Planned Parenthood, NARAL and NAF and their high priced lawyers and extremely liberal judges have determined that most abortion information and statistics are somehow protected under privacy laws. The only place to get the most up-to-date information, and that is only what they want to share to suit their purposes, is from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Alan Guttmacher was President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and a leader in the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

According to Alan Guttmacher, guttmacher.org/presentations/trends.pdf, abortion rates rose to a high of 1.6 million per year about 1990 and fell to a low of 1.3 million in 2003, the last year that concise numbers are available.

 

[proudnifi]

From what I’ve read, Karen is questioning one anti-abortion tactic - indiscriminate usage of graphic pictures of abortion. To insist that this makes her pro-abortion is off-base.

And with regard to Karen’s concern about ectopic pregnancies and situations where the mother’s life is truly endangered (which also endangers the baby’s life), she isn’t saying that abortion is a no-brainer. I don’t hear her saying that the baby isn’t a baby. Maybe more of a self-defense argument with the belief that the “opponent” was going to die regardless. This doesn’t make her 100% pro-abortion and a PP supporter.

 

[KarenNC]

The writing of a pro-abort. Calling those who are fighting with everything they have to stop the senseless, horrific slaughter of babies in the womb - EXTREMISTS. Never, never, never would anyone who cares about the lives of these tiny babies use the word to describe a fellow pro-lifer.

I said
“Unfortunately, the only ones who “lose” are both the young children exposed to these images and any who are lost to abortion because these tactics have given someone a disgust for the prolife movement as a whole and dismissed the entire problem as extremist hyperbole.”

You know, it’s English when I type it in…

 

[sprout]

even some Bishops disagree with the use of these images:

Calgary’s outspokenly pro-life Catholic bishop, Fred Henry, recently sent a letter to all his parishes and Catholic schools banning the local group, the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, that depends upon the images as the centre of their argument. Henry condemned the use of the images as immoral saying they violated the moral principle that “the end…does not justify the means.”

Bishop Henry states: “GAP in its usage of pictures of aborted children violates their human dignity, denies human remains the respect that inherently must be accorded them and reduces them to things, albeit, for an arguably good reason. The end, however, does not justify the means.”

“In no way may these pictures be construed as healing, nor can the project be described as ‘tough love,’ and I am not in favour of this kind of pedagogy (teaching). In my opinion it does more harm than good to the pro-life cause.”

 

[KarenNC]

Certainly I’d think billboards should be used within at least a 50 mile radius of any abortuary.

If one can access statistics on which communities perform the most abortions then that’s a place to used billboards.

There are some communities which have legislation in effect which prohibit abortions from being performed in their communities. Where to young women from those areas go to get the abortions? How many miles are women traveling in order to abort a pregnancy? Let’s say there are 7 communities surrounding a community which provides abortions. I would place billboard ads at the borderlines entering into the one community providing the abortions, that way any women/men driving into town to schedule an abortion can see just what it is they are about to do and hopefully turn around.

We can even combine both approaches mentioned here…we can have 3 billboards along the road leading to the borderline showing positive pictures of fetal development (first and second trimester) and then the closer one gets to the borderline smack them with the photos of those same staged developed fetuses aborted.

Sorry, don’t see how that squares with "Inundating the masses, particularly in locations which have nothing at all to do with abortions, can have a negative effect on the pro-life cause as some have noted, and I testified myself. " or “The billboards are something parents can drive around to avoid when their little ones are in the car.”

50 miles is “targeted”? If the military were aiming to hit a specific target and hit something 50 miles away, would you consider that this met acceptable standards of accuracy? If you asked for directions to a specific place and I gave you directions to “within a 50 mile radius,” would that work?

Do you reasonably expect that people actively “have something to do with” everything that goes on within a 50 mile radius of their home, for example? That there will be only a “handful” of young children exposed if there are these signs within a 50 mile radius and at all borders between communities? My husband drives an hour to work everyday and it is a great deal closer than 50 miles. I drive around a lot in the course of my week to activities with my child, including to several neigboring towns, and I can’t say that more than once every few months am I beyond 50 miles from my home and that is only with preplanning to consciously do so. 50 square miles can encompass a great many separate communities, many of which may have absolutely nothing to do with abortion, regardless of whether there is a clinic within that radius.

If the billboards are set up for 50 miles around any clinic, including at all the borderlines between communities to catch anyone who might possibly be “driving into town to schedule an abortion,” how is it reasonable to then say that “the billboards are something parents can drive around to avoid”? Sounds much more like “inundating the masses” to me.

 

[seekerz]

Looks like we posted at the same time. I outlined my view on the Church teaching on ectopic pregnancy in the response to seekerz. My information comes from cuf.org/faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57 and I do realize that this is not an absolute teaching, but appears to be fairly standard.

It is primarily an objection to tying the hands of physicians as to what procedures are available to them on what appears to me to be semantics, and not following the principle of doing the least harm possible in a very tragic and unfortunate situation.

You’re not the only one with a problem with that particular issue. Mine is that there are medico-legal implications here that need to be addressed. What if the doctor is Catholic and the patient not (keeping in mind that this is often an emergency situation and switching doctors may not be practical)? If he follows his conscience he may get in trouble for imposing his choice on the patient; conversely he may end up being guilty of serious sin. I see little offered in the way of guidance and often in discussions it seems to be assumed that the doctor either has no morals/beliefs or that they are irrelevant.

That doesn’t prevent me from being staunchly pro-life. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”, is enough for me. How can life not begin at conception, if I believe Jeremiah 1:5?

No need for graphics/ultrasound: God made me, He loves me…ditto for every other human being. To Him alone belongs power over life and death. It’s really very simple.

Difficult situations may arise surrounding a woman’s pregnancy, but abortion is not the solution. In addition to being murder, it’s the greatest wrong perpetrated on women - ever. Any woman who recognizes her own worth recognizes also the worth of any fetus that grows within her. Of all the reasons given for abortion, economic ones are the most demeaning to a woman and her child because it implies that life and self-worth are dependent on economic status i.e the rich have more of a right to live, the poor don’t deserve to. As for rape as an excuse: the fetus is still an integral part of a woman and as worthy; it would make as much sense to say that she should excise her female organs because she was attacked as to say she should abort because she was raped. Whatever a woman does to herself she does to her fetus and to me abortion is the ultimate act of self-mutilation.

I believe that if all women accepted the sovereignty of God and understood their God-given worth, they’d never choose abortion-on-demand regardless of the circumstance.

 

[estesbob]

Per the CDC the number of abortions has been under 1.2 million since 1997 and under 900,000 since 1998.

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm#tab1

That is what is happening??? Okay, if you say so.

People who are actually involved in the pro-life movement realize that the CDC only records abortions are reported. Since there is no requirement to report abortions their figures are inadequate. Nobody, I mean nobody on either side of the issue uses the CDC statistics to determine the number of abortions in this country. The only accurate way to get a number is is to do a survey The last figures we have available are for 2003 where it was estimated the number of abortions was 1.3 million.

Please remember Karen tjhat we’re talking about dead children here. Your efforts to try to minimize this evil by claiming there are less abortions than we have stated is specious.

 

[estesbob]

I said
“Unfortunately, the only ones who “lose” are both the young children exposed to these images and any who are lost to abortion because these tactics have given someone a disgust for the prolife movement as a whole and dismissed the entire problem as extremist hyperbole.”

You know, it’s English when I type it in…

Oh I get it- Those people who are trying to stop abortion cause abortions and those people that support abortion stop abortions. Now that’s crystal-clear. The mental masturbation people go through to justify supporting this abject evil is a terrible thing to behold.

 

[proudnifi]

Oh I get it- Those people who are trying to stop abortion cause abortions and those people that support abortion stop abortions. Now that’s crystal-clear. The mental masturbation people go through to justify supporting this abject evil is a terrible thing to behold.

I think you misunderstood Karen’s point. With regard to those lost to abortion due to their disgust with pro-life tactics, those people probably weren’t pro-life to start with. Shock-tactics don’t give them the suggestion that abortion is ok, they just get pushed farther away from pro-life thought. It will be harder to get them to open their minds to the good guys.

The post doesn’t say anything about abortion supporters stopping abortion. Nor does the post support abortion (or suggest that any and all anti-abortion tactics are wrong).

 

[KarenNC]

Yep, these pro-aborts masquerade as caring mommies while trying to undermine all the good the pro-life side is doing. Especially now. They know they are losing the battle. They have to put on different personas like satan does to try to infiltrate the ranks and cause us to question if what we are doing is right.

One could use the same reasoning to claim that you are indeed actually also estesbob, vernhumphrey, mapleoak, bmmckinney, ani ibi, etc and just posting under different names and personas to make it look like the practices being discussed are more widely supported than they actually are…

And I suspect that it would have pretty much the same basis in reality.

 

[sprout]

Originally Posted by Philothea53
Yep, these pro-aborts masquerade as caring mommies while trying to undermine all the good the pro-life side is doing. Especially now. They know they are losing the battle. They have to put on different personas like satan does to try to infiltrate the ranks and cause us to question if what we are doing is right.

Yes and how do you manage to masquerade as Bishop Henry from Calgary:

Calgary’s outspokenly pro-life Catholic Bishop Fred Henry states:

*“…usage of pictures of aborted children violates their human dignity, denies human remains the respect that inherently must be accorded them and reduces them to things, albeit, for an arguably good reason. The end, however, does not justify the means.”

“In no way may these pictures be construed as healing, nor can the project be described as ‘tough love,’ and I am not in favour of this kind of pedagogy (teaching). In my opinion it does more harm than good to the pro-life cause.”*

how DO you do it? or do these posters also think the good Bishop is just another pro-abort pawn of Satan along with anyone who dares to disagree with their tactics?

 

[mapleoak]

From what I’ve read, Karen is questioning one anti-abortion tactic - indiscriminate usage of graphic pictures of abortion. To insist that this makes her pro-abortion is off-base.

Not only is deductive reasoning used, which is garnered from her statements, to determine her pro-abortion stance, but also her very own admission in several posts.

And with regard to Karen’s concern about ectopic pregnancies and situations where the mother’s life is truly endangered (which also endangers the baby’s life), she isn’t saying that abortion is a no-brainer. I don’t hear her saying that the baby isn’t a baby. Maybe more of a self-defense argument with the belief that the “opponent” was going to die regardless. This doesn’t make her 100% pro-abortion and a PP supporter.

What I read is it is perfectly acceptable to use chemical means to kill ones baby. If that is not pro-death, what is? What does 100% pro-abortion mean. Murder is okay sometimes?

I said
“Unfortunately, the only ones who “lose” are both the young children exposed to these images and any who are lost to abortion because these tactics have given someone a disgust for the prolife movement as a whole and dismissed the entire problem as extremist hyperbole.”

Somethings seem to have a need to be belabored. Once again, how many babies do you figure have been lost to abortion because there mother, upon seeing a sign, said: “So that’s what abortion is, I’m gonna go get me one.”

Do you reasonably expect that people actively “have something to do with” everything that goes on within a 50 mile radius of their home, for example? That there will be only a “handful” of young children exposed if there are these signs within a 50 mile radius and at all borders between communities? My husband drives an hour to work everyday and it is a great deal closer than 50 miles. I drive around a lot in the course of my week to activities with my child, including to several neigboring towns, and I can’t say that more than once every few months am I beyond 50 miles from my home and that is only with preplanning to consciously do so. 50 square miles can encompass a great many separate communities, many of which may have absolutely nothing to do with abortion, regardless of whether there is a clinic within that radius.

Yeah, like these signs are some great plague to be avoided at all costs. Let’s plan our route to make sure we don’t drive past one, lest we be reminded of the truth. The truth is too much to handle.

If the billboards are set up for 50 miles around any clinic, including at all the borderlines between communities to catch anyone who might possibly be “driving into town to schedule an abortion,” how is it reasonable to then say that “the billboards are something parents can drive around to avoid”? Sounds much more like “inundating the masses” to me.

Obviously the billboards need to be seen by “somebody” in order to have some effect. A book is nothing but a paperweight unless it is read.

 

[mapleoak]

I’d love to see some of those supporting showing these graphic pictures over on the thread about showing inappropriate touching media to children on the family thread.

I for one feel myself on different sides of a similar issue due to personal experiences.

I wonder how others would react?

Not sure which thread your talking about. What is the relevence of this?