How do the pro-life movement respond to the common justification of abortion?

[Bohm_Bawerk]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

 

[DianaCC]

The claim is nonsensical. We don’t legalize things just because people are going to do them anyway. And in the case of maternal deaths caused by attempted feticide, the proper response is to prosecute those who cause the death of the mother. That’s how all other crimes are handled; I don’t see how this is an exception.

 

[filter2700]

In America, we have a democracy. If the people want something legal, it will be legal. Does that make it right? Not necessarily. Do I think abortion is ok? No, I don’t. Yet, we all have free will, and people can choose to do what they want to do with their bodies, although there is also another life inside of theirs that they are not thinking about. And people can also choose to enact laws that aren’t morally right. The people who choose to do these things aren’t Christians, and as Catholics, as much as we don’t like it, we have to grant them the same freedom they have that we do. All we can do is Love them, and pray for them and show them by example what it means to be a Christian. However, I can’t help but be honest with myself and agree that women were having abortions before, and they were unsafe. So, in that sense, if they are going to do it, at least there is a “safe way” for them to do it where they won’t hurt themselves if they are committed on doing it.

It isn’t our job to stand outside of clinics with signs saying “abortion is murder” and to pretty much harass the employees of the center and the people going in. That’s not what Jesus came to do and that wasn’t his message, his message was to Love. His message wasn’t to condemn others.

Jesus didn’t come to rule this material world or to overcome the evil in it and rule the evil politics, so why should we? Jesus himself never got involved in fighting worldly problems, he never ran for office, fought the Roman empire and told his followers to do the same. Jesus’ followers never got involved in fighting world affairs either. They went about sharing and saving souls and building the Body of Christ.

1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

Each of these descriptions of what is in the world - “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” - reflects a disposition of the flesh; each is based on the self and on self promotion; and each is a tool used in the world to get things done. When followers of Christ get involved with the things of this world, to fight against it or join it, they employ the tools the world uses, which are antithetical to the tools the father wants us to use. What are the tools of the Father?

Scripture calls them fruit of the spirit. When us Christians stop responding to the world through “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” and instead employ the tools God desires, we find ourselves “not of the world, but of the Father,” and responding in LOVE. When anything is done in the name of Christianity, it should be by the fruit or tools of the Spirit and never by the ways or tools of the world.

What did Jesus tell his followers to do? To believe, pray, feed the poor, and to LOVE. Not sit outside a clinic with signs and try to change peoples minds! If anything, that doesn’t show them what us Christians are, that’s not what a true Christian does. A true Christian doesn’t try to end these worldly affairs to that extent, it isn’t our goal and wasn’t the goal of Christ.

Christianity, as a whole, should never believe or endorse the idea that we have a God-authored duty to collectively embrace any one political party or seek to collectively fight against an ugly social evil. When we make this our "cause,’ we have utterly lost what we are called to be and do as believers - and that is to share Jesus Christ, in love, as the only real solution to things that threaten our comfort, security, and/or piece of mind.

When we join activities like protesting outside abortion clinics, WE BECOME KNOWN MORE FOR WHAT WE STAND AGAINST AS BELIEVERS THAN WHAT WE STAND FOR, JESUS CHRIST! What we SHOULD represent is the only thing that will make any real difference n the lives of the lost and searching people. When we are known more for what we stand against, we automatically alienate far too many people who first need to know what “we stand” for so they can later choose to share the source of salvation with others and to change their mind on other issues. This was the very same aim Jesus had the day He sent His disciples out.

We can spend our short lives, the few years we really have, sharing Jesus, or fighting those who do not know or believe in His name, or we can do nothing.

 

[Saburo]

Pro-abortion types like to throw around a lot of phoney statistics about back alley abortions and about how legal abortions have saved lives. Here’s the problem with that: There are no statistics on back alley abortions. As in the case of all crimes, no one performed an illegal abortion and then called a national database to report it. No one knows how many women died from illegal abortions, as there was not a crime category for deaths caused by illegal abortions. There remains nothing to compare current death rates to death rates before legalized abortion. The pro-abortion crowd made up their numbers out of thin air. You can’t dispute a ghost you can’t see.

Abortion will eventually end the same way it became the law of the land — through the Supreme Court. It is only a matter of time before the right combination of conservative Senate, conservative President and old, retiring or dying liberal Supreme Court Justice collide. That is why 2012 is so important. The majority of Americans oppose abortion on demand. They have seen enough blood.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I had read years ago, that some judge in New Jersey had referred to abortion as a legal execution.

Maybe someone can find the name of the judge and the exact quote … Lexis Nexis?

Anyway, that about sums it up.

 

[Corki]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

For one thing, your statistics are wrong. Women did not die “often” from illegal abortions. Pro-abortion advocates toss around large figures. Some say that abortion deaths before Roe v. Wade were 10,000 a year. In 1972, however, the year before R v W, illegal abortion deaths were 39. Rates were much higher earlier in the century but that number dropped drastically as antibiotics became more widely used. Most illegal abortions weren’t “back alley” affairs either. They were performed illegally by regular doctors “off the books”. By 1975, with abortion fully legal, deaths were at 34. Four of those were illegal abortions but the rest were legal ones Not much of a difference.

The CDC, by the way stopped reporting abortion deaths around 2000. And the deaths of women who died after taking RU-486 aren’t incuded in the statistics.

 

[smichhertz]

1. There were NOT large numbers of women dying from illegal abortions before it was legalized in the US

In 1972, 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions. (Source: CDC) . The idea that thousands of women were dying before abortion was legalized in the US is a total myth.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson was essentially the “father” of the pro-choice movement and he took full responsibility for spreading the false idea that “thousands” of women were dying from illegal abortions:

“I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.” - Dr. Bernard Nathanson

Source: Bernard Nathanson, M.D. Aborting America (Doubleday, 1979), 193

2. Prior to Roe v. Wade, illegal abortions were being performed in doctor’s offices, NOT back alleys.

For the year 1960, “90% of all illegal abortions are presently done by physicians.” - Mary Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem,” in American Journal of Health 50 (July 1960):949

There are many more arguments to make, but I don’t have time to post them all.

 

[promethius]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

I have as much sympathy for any woman who wants murdering her baby to be legal so she can be safer as I have sympathy for the bank robber who wants robbing banks to be legal so he won’t be harmed in the progress of his sin.

It’s a red herring argument meant to evoke an emotional response that has nothing to do with logic. There weren’t even that many deaths from illegal abortions before, illegal abortions were never largely “back alley”, and even if there were and they were, I don’t care. Lawbreaking murderers get little sympathy from me (in fact, the only sympathy they get from me for their crimes is the fervant hope that God had mercy on their souls and that they were able to repent and receive salvation).

 

[sw85]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

That’s a consequentialist argument, so the response should be that you cannot do evil (endorse and subsidize abortions) that good may result (women not dying while getting abortions).

My plan for abortion (and I believe the plan most consistent with the Church’s teachings) is to treat abortion as a felony equivalent to murder, with the exception of abortion which appears at the time to be objectively necessary to save the life of the mother. Physicians must be prepared to explain and justify every abortion they perform to a medical ethics board, and risk imprisonment for murder and suspension of licensure if the board concludes that the abortion was not reasonably necessary; offending women should likewise stand accused of murder, with anyone who aids and abets the abortion standing accused of criminal conspiracy. Obviously this puts a greater burden on the physician, since the woman is necessarily choosing on the basis of the doctor’s recommendation, and she should not be held responsible for the doctor’s bad faith.

 

[manualman]

Those making this argument should also be advocating for government subsidies to make low cost handguns available to anyone and everyone who wants one.

Problem: The poor often only have access to poor quality “Saturday Night Special” type weapons and when they attempt to use them (for what purpose is irrelevant here), they often injure themselves in the process. Therefore, good quality firearms should be made available at low prices to the general public in order to drive the poor quality gunmakers out of business.

Strangely, I don’t hear anybody making that argument. Mainly because it is a load of baloney - in both cases, guns and abortion.

 

[St_Francis]

In America, we have a democracy. If the people want something legal, it will be legal. Does that make it right? Not necessarily. Do I think abortion is ok? No, I don’t. Yet, we all have free will, and people can choose to do what they want to do with their bodies, although there is also another life inside of theirs that they are not thinking about. And people can also choose to enact laws that aren’t morally right. The people who choose to do these things aren’t Christians, and as Catholics, as much as we don’t like it, we have to grant them the same freedom they have that we do.

No, no one has any more right to violate the natural law than anyone else. The fact that large numbers agree doesn’t change natural law.

Did the fact that lots of people believed it was all right make legalized slavery right?

All we can do is Love them, and pray for them and show them by example what it means to be a Christian.

No, this is not correct. While it is true that all of us should pray, some of us are called to do more.

However, I can’t help but be honest with myself and agree that women were having abortions before, and they were unsafe. So, in that sense, if they are going to do it, at least there is a “safe way” for them to do it where they won’t hurt themselves if they are committed on doing it.

Hopefully you read the other comments which refute your point here.

It isn’t our job to stand outside of clinics with signs saying “abortion is murder” and to pretty much harass the employees of the center and the people going in.

True, we should not harass the employees, but protesting outside of clinics in no way requires harassing employees unless you call the pricking of their conscience harrassment.

Moreover, we live in a democracy, and protesting and informing our fellow citizens is not only a part of the democratic process but instructing the ignorant and admonishing sinners are both acts of mercy enjoined upon us by the Church.

That’s not what Jesus came to do and that wasn’t his message, his message was to Love. His message wasn’t to condemn others.

His message was most assuredly to help those around us to attain Heaven, and pro-life work is most certainly that.

Jesus didn’t come to rule this material world or to overcome the evil in it and rule the evil politics, so why should we?

Christ is the King of this world and the next. He is the Ruler of us all.

We are the body of Christ, members of societies. Of course we must be involved in politics, just as we should be involved in everything else. While we may tolerate certain evils due to the fact that not everyone is Catholic, our faith shouldd inform everything we do, including oir work even if we work in politics.

Jesus himself never got involved in fighting worldly problems,

I recall a certain incident with some moneychangers…

Continued…

 

[St_Francis]

…Continued

… He [Christ] never ran for office, fought the Roman empire and told his followers to do the same. Jesus’ followers never got involved in fighting world affairs either. They went about sharing and saving souls and building the Body of Christ.

Christ healed the daughter of the centurion and did not condemn what he did for a living. But do you think Christ expects Catholics to leave oir Faith at home when we go to work?

In the early Church, Christians were persecuted and martyred. There came a time when this was no longer the case, and Christians even attained positions of power. Neither being in a position of authority nor acting in one’s Faith is wrong.

1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

Each of these descriptions of what is in the world - “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” - reflects a disposition of the flesh; each is based on the self and on self promotion; and each is a tool used in the world to get things done. When followers of Christ get involved with the things of this world, to fight against it or join it, they employ the tools the world uses, which are antithetical to the tools the father wants us to use.

No, it is not true that Catholics “must” employ the tools of this world to get things done. We are supposed to pray and act to show forth God’s goodness, not hide our light under a bushel.

What are the tools of the Father?

Scripture calls them fruit of the spirit. When us Christians stop responding to the world through “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” and instead employ the tools God desires, we find ourselves “not of the world, but of the Father,” and responding in LOVE. When anything is done in the name of Christianity, it should be by the fruit or tools of the Spirit and never by the ways or tools of the world.

You seem to be under the impression that reminding people of the sinfulness of their action is something not done in love, and that working to save lives is not done in love.*

What did Jesus tell his followers to do? To believe, pray, feed the poor, and to LOVE. Not sit outside a clinic with signs and try to change peoples minds! If anything, that doesn’t show them what us Christians are, that’s not what a true Christian does. A true Christian doesn’t try to end these worldly affairs to that extent, it isn’t our goal and wasn’t the goal of Christ.

Do you know that when Dr Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL, saw that abortion was wrong, he turned to the protesters outside his clinic? He began to stand with them, and eventually as a result he converted to Catholicism, as have several people prominently involved in the abortion side, like the woman called “Jane Roe” in Roe v Wade.

And the lives of unborn babies are saved every day as a direct result of people’s pro-life work.

Christianity, as a whole, should never believe or endorse the idea that we have a God-authored duty to collectively embrace any one political party

True, we should not embrace a political party…

or seek to collectively fight against an ugly social evil.
Like neighbors lying robbed and beaten on the side of the road?

When we make this our "cause,’ we have utterly lost what we are called to be and do as believers - and that is to share Jesus Christ, in love, as the only real solution to things that threaten our comfort, security, and/or piece of mind.

When we join activities like protesting outside abortion clinics, WE BECOME KNOWN MORE FOR WHAT WE STAND AGAINST AS BELIEVERS THAN WHAT WE STAND FOR, JESUS CHRIST! What we SHOULD represent is the only thing that will make any real difference n the lives of the lost and searching people. When we are known more for what we stand against, we automatically alienate far too many people who first need to know what “we stand” for so they can later choose to share the source of salvation with others and to change their mind on other issues. This was the very same aim Jesus had the day He sent His disciples out.

You are right that we should not be pro-life advocates and only incidentally Catholic, but you seem to have forgotten that we are supposed to be Catholic and therefore pro-life.*

We cannot leave our faith in the Church–we must take our faith with us when we leave! We must take it with us all week long and everywhere we go!

Christ called us to be the salt of the world, but salt that is dead is worthless, no?

We can spend our short lives, the few years we really have, sharing Jesus, or fighting those who do not know or believe in His name, or we can do nothing.

As I pointed out, pro-life work has been helpful in people’s conversions, and pro-life people try always to be respectful of others and thus avoid fighting, so I cannot see the dichotomy that you describe.

 

[filter2700]

Maybe you should read my post again and try to understand it with that small brain of yours.

 

[Viki63]

Maybe you should read my post again and try to understand it with that small brain of yours.

This is unkind, unworthy of a Catholic, and will not serve to impress anyone with the correctness of your comments.

 

[Viki63]

I volunteer in a pregnancy crisis center. It’s a little like the starfish story: we save one or two while hundreds around us die . . .but at least we save the few we can.

The other day we had a young girl call us from an abortion center, begging for help. Her mother was forcing her to have an abortion against her will. We gave her what support we could, told her to tell the doctor she refused, look him in the eye and tell him she would remember his name and bring legal action against him when she came of age. It was a hurried call. We did not hear from her again. I doubt she was able to withstand the pressure.
This kind of thing goes on all the time. Women pressured into abortions by parents, spouses, boyfriends, social workers. These numbers, in my experience, are large, much larger than the imaginary huge numbers of women who died from back alley abortions.
We need to pray for an end to abortion.

 

[Rahn]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

My first thought would be that the answer to “everyone’s doing it anyway” isn’t always to make it legal. This hasn’t worked with drugs in some countries in Europe that have legalised it, nor with prostitution in places like Nevada. I think this train of thought came into play when prohibition failed in the US, the pendulum has swung the other way, so to speak.

You can’t legislate morality, this is true, but you also can’t base legislation on human behaviour either.

The difference with abortion from alcohol, drugs or prostitution is that in abortion there is certainly an innocent party that is victimised by the act. Someone who dies of an overdose, a sexually transmitted disease or a fatty liver can be equated to a woman that dies from a botched abortion that she chose to have. It is death, sad and tragic, but it’s teh result of an action taken by the person who dies. But, abortion is unique in that there is another person, who did not choose the act, that certainly dies.

 

[Cojuanco]

One of the main reasons abortion was legalized in multiple countries was that women who wanted an abortion would take the “backdoor” route of attaining it, which often resulted in the death of the women receiving the operation. Legalizing abortion therefore enabled women who were going to have an abortion anyway to at least do it safely. Whereas in the previous circumstance, 2 people may have died, now it is in essence only 1 person (and much to your dismay, it may not even be considered a person by some people).

So how do the pro-life movement criticize this claim?

I’m interested in all of your responses, and also your plan on abortion (whether banning it outright, defunding it, etc). But please refrain from sensationalism, political buzzwords, and phrasemongering – without solid logic/evidence to back it up. Please also refrain from regurgitating the Catechism (in the real world, not everyone is Catholic). Thank you.

Basically, I would point out that before Roe, illegal abortions were largely performed in doctor’s offices, which for the time were safe. They weren’t done in some back alley by some untrained quack - they were performed by the family doctor (whether that in itself is sickening I leave up to you and God). But this of course never made for good propaganda - how could you mobilize popular support at aiming to prevent a tragic, if infinitesimally rare?

Thus, if abortion were made illegal tomorrow, the death rate would likely either remain constant from now (the CDC no longer collects abortion death statistics due to political pressure) or even decrease somewhat. People, after all, don’t fundamentally change that much over time.

In other words, even if women took the backdoor route of abortion, in all likelihood not much would change, other than the fact that it would be illegal.