Gift of Life/Right to Life

  • Thread starter Thread starter jbc1208
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

jbc1208

Guest
Hi everyone. I was reading a Catholic Answers article and had a thought that I am a little confused about. For background, I am a practicing Roman Catholic, and I am pro-life. However, I am not as well versed in apologetics as I should be (especially on the topic of abortion and IVF). In the article, the writer states that life is a gift, not right. The article was in reference to defending Church teaching on IVF. I agree with the statement and the Church’s teaching, but I am a bit confused.

I know the pro-life movement has a saying that all human beings born and unborn have a right to life. I also agree with the statement. My dilemma is how can these two statements agree? I know Church teaching on both topics is infallible, but I don’t really understand how one statement can be made that life is a gift, not a right and at the same time another can be made that all human beings born and unborn have the RIGHT to life. Am I missing something? Please excuse my lack of understanding!

Thank you.
 
Basically one side seems to be saying that life is a gift, rather than a right. The other side seems to be saying that life IS a right. I just don’t really understand how both arguments can be made at the same time. Again, it’s probably due to my lack of understanding.
 
it is modern Christians engaging in the “rights” language (which is faulty for a number of reason) to express the IDEA that it is a sin to kill the unborn. a human ought not to be killed and slaughtered like this, and under our modern legal system, people often call this a right, so that they will be protected. rights are just long series of protections and guarantees that one person will be more valued than another in a legal case (like the “right” to self-defense meaning that if you do this, then you will be more valued than the person who tried to kill you in a court case and won’t go to jail if you did it in the legal way). that is all
 
It sounds like semantics to me, sort of trying to separate the Catholic view of life vs. the Political view of it by playing word games. Do you have a link to an article?
 
It won’t let me post the link in the chat for some reason, but the article’s title is “The Hardest Teaching of the all” on the Catholic Answers website. I just searched for In Vitro Fertilization to find it.

As for the pro-life argument, I am just referencing conclusions/arguments I have heard from other that are Catholic and non-Catholic alike.
 
I just read the article and confirmed what I suspected:
But no one is ever due another human person. God gives life as a pure gift, not as something owed. Indeed, as the CDF instruction Donum Vitae put it, it’s not parents who have rights here, but the child : specifically, the right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents” and the “right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.” Once we understand this—and I think most people, upon reflection, can see it—we see some of the justification for IVF vanish.
Click to expand...
The author of the article is saying that having children isn’t a right, but that someone already alive (as an unborn child) has a right to live. He’s proposing that some people may understand “Right to Life” to mean that every person has a RIGHT to have a child, and he is using the word “gift” to refute THAT idea. I don’t think it’s contradictory at all.
 
Last edited:
@jbc1208 It is not conradictory at all. Life is always a gift and at the same time everyone always have right TO LIVE (that is actually right for life but missunderstood as right like right on food or home). It is not right of owning/having (baby) but of being (alive).
 
Last edited:
Life is a gift by God.
Life is a right between humans.

I.e. other humans don’t have jurisdiction over God’s personal gifts.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top