How to answer this objection to abortion teachings

[Rau]

The argument is “Wouldn’t you should stop a mother who was about to shoot her child? What’s different here if you think it’s murder? Clearly you don’t.”

What’s the best argument for the distinction?

The difference is patently obvious. I can do more good than harm by intervening to stop the woman with the gun.

 

[Rau]

Not to hijack this thread, but I just had some jerk (a friend of a friend) on Facebook ask me in an abortion discussion “Which is more sacred, life or body sovereignty?” (Hidden meaning: My Body, my choice) I responded “Life.”

Then this persons says “Well then I guess you would support a law REQUIRING people to donate organs so that others may live, right?”

The negative precepts of the divine law forbid (an absolute) morally evil acts such as murder.

The positive precepts are not absolutes. We are urged to love and help others. The means and the extent to which we do so are matters of judgement for each of us - they cannot be absolutes, as logic should make clear. The law proposed would be an absolute.

 

[mikekle]

Humans have free will.

A woman who is wanting to have an abortion goes to the clinic and someone may try to talk her out of it. Pray for her and her baby, etc. Done in a peaceful manner. Someone going in and trying to stop her abortion would be considered violence, I would think.

Not physically stopping the abortion does not equal not wanting abortions to end.

I disagree…if you were out in public and saw a woman about to kill her child, would you not try to go forcibly stop her, in fact, if you saw anyone attempting to kill another person, would you not use force to prevent it? Same thing imo.

Actually people who have forcibly prevented murders are usually recognized as heroes afterwards too, even if they had to use violence to prevent a death. The people that tried to stop Hitler using violence were also recognized as heroes, after a long period of time of course, at the time, Im sure they were hated for this…again, same thing with abortion.

 

[Usagi]

I disagree…if you were out in public and saw a woman about to kill her child, would you not try to go forcibly stop her, in fact, if you saw anyone attempting to kill another person, would you not use force to prevent it? Same thing imo.

Actually people who have forcibly prevented murders are usually recognized as heroes afterwards too, even if they had to use violence to prevent a death. The people that tried to stop Hitler using violence were also recognized as heroes, after a long period of time of course, at the time, Im sure they were hated for this…again, same thing with abortion.

BUT if an act of violence is foreseeably not going to achieve the immediate goal, and will have negative long-term effects on the overall goal, there is good reason to refrain from it.

Jesus and the Apostles were surrounded by the atrocities of the Roman Empire daily, and they never thought it proper to intervene violently.

 

[Crown_of_Stars]

I’ve often heard this objection to Catholic teaching on abortion. It’s going something like:

If you really believe abortion is the equivalent of murder, how is it that you can stand by and not physically intervene? There have been 50 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade, many more deaths than in the Holocaust, and yet the Church doesn’t advocate taking serious measures to stop it. Just voting and praying rosaries outside clinics. It’s clear you think it’s bad, but also clear you don’t think it’s bad enough that you need to break the laws to stop, so you don’t really think it’s as a bad as mass murder.

What’s the best response?

I don’t know anymore, really. These creatures just can’t ever be reasoned with. I see them as nothing more than big bullies who are cowards underneath, cowards who go after and attack the smallest of the small, the most innocent of the innocent. They need to be put in their place, but that is something only God can and will do.

 

[Usagi]

I disagree…if you were out in public and saw a woman about to kill her child, would you not try to go forcibly stop her, in fact, if you saw anyone attempting to kill another person, would you not use force to prevent it? Same thing imo.

Actually people who have forcibly prevented murders are usually recognized as heroes afterwards too, even if they had to use violence to prevent a death. The people that tried to stop Hitler using violence were also recognized as heroes, after a long period of time of course, at the time, Im sure they were hated for this…again, same thing with abortion.

BUT if an act of violence is foreseeably not going to achieve the immediate goal, and will have negative long-term effects on the overall goal, there is good reason to refrain from it.

Jesus and the Apostles were surrounded by the atrocities of the Roman Empire daily, and they never thought it proper to intervene violently.

 

[Rau]

BUT if an act of violence is foreseeably not going to achieve the immediate goal, and will have negative long-term effects on the overall goal, there is good reason to refrain from it.

Jesus and the Apostles were surrounded by the atrocities of the Roman Empire daily, and they never thought it proper to intervene violently.

An act judged likely to do more harm than good is an immoral act. Acting violently to impede an abortion is very likely (IMHO) just that.

 

[Viki63]

Thinking about the Holocaust, we notice that people didn’t use violence to stop Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. They used clandestine, underground networks and methods to rescue as many people as they could. The Pope hid Jews in the Vatican, I understand. People took children into their own families to protect them, hid whole families in their attics, there’s a story of a priest who bicycled from one country to another with a Jewish baby in his bike basket to save his life.
Violence would only have ended the protesters’ lives, it wouldn’t have helped the Jewish people.

We have a similar problem, violence would only land us in jail. I would go there if it would help, but I don’t think it would. And ,my first responsibility is to support my family, of whom I’m the sole support right now. Pretty sure I’m not the only one in that position.

.

 

[mikekle]

Thinking about the Holocaust, we notice that people didn’t use violence to stop Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. They used clandestine, underground networks and methods to rescue as many people as they could. The Pope hid Jews in the Vatican, I understand. People took children into their own families to protect them, hid whole families in their attics, there’s a story of a priest who bicycled from one country to another with a Jewish baby in his bike basket to save his life.
Violence would only have ended the protesters’ lives, it wouldn’t have helped the Jewish people.

We have a similar problem, violence would only land us in jail. I would go there if it would help, but I don’t think it would. And ,my first responsibility is to support my family, of whom I’m the sole support right now. Pretty sure I’m not the only one in that position.

.

Well, people did those kind of clandestine things only because there was no other way to fight back, the Nazis were simply too powerful and in control, Hitler had various ways to avoid situations where someone may attempt to kill him, although a group did try to kill him with a bomb, but they were only able to do this because they had special access to a place he would be at, majority of people had no chance of getting anywhere near him, even if they did, they knew there would be many others with him who were armed.

I dont condone violence, but if a normal citizen had been able to get close to him, even knowing their life would be over at this point if they followed thru, their simple action would have saved how many lives?

Your last sentence is the main reason that prevents a majority of people from doing things like this (myself included), our concern for our quality of life is outweighed by what is probably right, criminal laws are put in place to protect these evil things, because they realize most people will value their freedom, their job, income, family, etc versus doing something that would certainly jeopardize all that, even if it goes against Gods law.

This is also the main reason why the war on terror is so brutal and long lasting, these jihadist fighters are not fighting because their leaders are telling them to, they sincerely believe its the RIGHT thing to do, killing the infidel, even if it means their own life is over or they are thrown in the deepest darkest jail cell for life, they take their faith and what they believe in (even if its wrong) very seriously.

 

[estesbob]

This argument isn’t coming from people who want to stop abortions (though I guess it could), but from people who think that abortion isn’t murder and say pro-lifers don’t really think that either.

The argument is “Wouldn’t you should stop a mother who was about to shoot her child? What’s different here if you think it’s murder? Clearly you don’t.”

What’s the best argument for the distinction?

The goal is the end legalized abortion in this country. Violence makes that goal difficult or impossible to obtain .

 

[St_Francis]

attempting to physically intervene would be a type of civil unrest and do we can use the criteria for just war on the proposed action. It would violate JWT in at least three ways: 1. there is still recourse to non-violent means of changing the situation in general, and 2. as others have pointed out, the results would be increased disorder, and 3. there is little chance of success.

 

[Lrning]

Intervening physically when a mother is about to shoot her child will save the child’s life. Once the murder has been prevented, laws are in place to ensure that the child continues to be safe.

Intervening physically when a mother is about to kill her child via abortion has almost zero chance of saving that child’s life. While the abortion may not happen today, the mother is free to reschedule her abortion at will. The only hope a pro-lifer has of saving that child’s life is to change the mother’s heart and mind. Intervening physically is not the way to do that.

 

[Joe_5859]

Intervening physically when a mother is about to shoot her child will save the child’s life. Once the murder has been prevented, laws are in place to ensure that the child continues to be safe.

Intervening physically when a mother is about to kill her child via abortion has almost zero chance of saving that child’s life. While the abortion may not happen today, the mother is free to reschedule her abortion at will. The only hope a pro-lifer has of saving that child’s life is to change the mother’s heart and mind. Intervening physically is not the way to do that.

Very good point.

 

[PRmerger]

Not to hijack this thread, but I just had some jerk (a friend of a friend) on Facebook ask me in an abortion discussion “Which is more sacred, life or body sovereignty?” (Hidden meaning: My Body, my choice) I responded “Life.”

Then this persons says “Well then I guess you would support a law REQUIRING people to donate organs so that others may live, right?”

Only if the potential donor had engaged in an activity which resulted in injury which required a new organ for this person.

 

[PRmerger]

I’ve often heard this objection to Catholic teaching on abortion. It’s going something like:

If you really believe abortion is the equivalent of murder, how is it that you can stand by and not physically intervene? There have been 50 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade, many more deaths than in the Holocaust, and yet the Church doesn’t advocate taking serious measures to stop it. Just voting and praying rosaries outside clinics. It’s clear you think it’s bad, but also clear you don’t think it’s bad enough that you need to break the laws to stop, so you don’t really think it’s as a bad as mass murder.

What’s the best response?

Regardless of whether everyone, or no one, steps up to stop an abortion, one has to evaluate abortion on whether it is moral or not.

One could stand by and do nothing, but that doesn’t change the argument: either the unborn fetus is a human being or he is not.

So the above argument is irrelevant.

It’s like saying: a German lady didn’t stop a Jew from being exterminated, therefore Jews aren’t people. (Or, therefore she really didn’t believe that the Jewish neighbor was a person).