Is it morally tolerable to tolerate abortion?

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fakename

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We know that tolerance is the rightly patient attitude toward someone else’s badness/error.

We also know that the defining mark of tolerance is the granting of a certain freedom for the tolerated thing to potentially spread.

So since some people commit abortion should we tolerate them and (potentially) allow their actions to spread under some possible scenario?

I think that maybe this is true, because otherwise tolerance couldn’t extend to every evil even though it’s definition seems to apply to all evil. Secondly I think this might be false since if tolerance is too extreme it becomes a vice. And it would seem that allowing murder to spread too widely would undermine society. So maybe tolerance for abortions would never be good or should only be tolerated under the scenario where abortions are rare.

I’m perplexed as usual.
 
Where did you get your definition of tolerance? Here two from dictionary.com
Tolerate:
  1. to allow the existence, presence, practice, or act of without prohibition or hindrance; permit.
  2. to endure without repugnance; put up with: I can tolerate laziness, but not incompetence.
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The other thing it seems you have done is combine the person with their actions.

As an act of sin, abortion cannot not be tolerated. Persons, on the other hand, who have materially participated in abortion must be loved. Obviously they must be permitted to exist.
 
Hello Fakename, still looking for answers on the same subject I see. A couple of thoughts:
Tolerance is not a virtue, it’s just another word for indifference. It’s typical of “change the language, change the culture” tendency of our society. Secular society is trying to redefine what freedom is and what love is with God out of the picture. The result can only be subjective feelings and selfishness. Christians on the other hand are called to “love the sinner and hate the sin”. Tolerance is not the same as accepting and loving others unconditionally. Love is a decision, tolerance is a non decision.
Have you ever read Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s books? I’m reading one of his books now about Mary “World’s first love”. He is doing a wonderful job at defining what freedom is and what it is not in that book. Don’t fall for the word games of our society (abortion=choice, homosexual=gay, making abortion rare=keeping abortion available under false pretenses…) God doesn’t tolerate us, He loves us and He doesn’t change. We need to extend compassion and share God’s forgiveness to those involved in abortions and help women in crisis pregnancy with real options.
 
I always thought “tolerate” meant to allow or permit. “Intolerant” means not to allow or not to permit.

God tolerates the Devil, but will not tolerate the devil in His presence.

We can tolerate the sinner but not his sin.

Thus, we put men in prison because we can tolerate their existence but we cannot tolerate their crimes.

I think we can tolerate the existence of abortionists, but we cannot tolerate their crimes.

Our society is shameful because it tolerates their crimes and even protects their crimes from prosecution.

All abortionists should be in prison, and would be if our society had any common sense left.

How we get common sense back is beyond me, since you would have to have it in order to get it back. Our government seems to have none left … neither common sense nor morals.
 
The most controversial thing I’ve learned about tolerance is this from (you guessed it) the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“A second idea akin to toleration is connivance (conniventia, dissimulatio), which means the deliberate closing of one’s eyes to evil conditions so as not to be obliged to take measures against them. The distinction between connivance and toleration lies in the fact that the latter not only closes its eyes to the tolerated evil, but also openly concedes it complete liberty of action and freedom to spread. It is indeed in this deliberate granting of liberty that the characteristic quality of toleration lies. For the intolerant person also regards what opposes him as an evil and a source of annoyance; but, it is only by combating it overtly or secretly, that he shows his intolerance.”

So tolerance, which is supposedly good according to the same article, is essentially to give something bad liberty to spread.
 
There are various degrees of tolerance. One simplistic blanket solution will not adequately cover all cases, even in the case of abortion. For example, I am walking by an abortion clinic and I see an unlocked electrical cabinet that feeds the building. If I pass up the opportunity to sabotage the electrical feed, then I am to some extent tolerating abortion. If I am a judge and I sentence an abortion doctor to only 6 months in prison (assuming abortion was illegal) then I am tolerating abortion by not giving him a life sentence. In fact, if I simply spend an evening bowling instead of spending that time lobbying my congressman to outlaw abortion, then I am to some extent tolerating abortion.

So before you can decide the question of this thread, you should first specify what level of toleration is being referred to.
 
This questions brings what to do if a person does not tolerate abortion. Was Scott Roeder justified for shooting George Tiller in a Lutheran church on May 31, 2009?

Roeder apparently thought this was a justifiable homicide.

Testifying in his own defense, Mr. Roeder confessed that he did shoot Dr. Tiller after studying his victim’s habits and security precautions. The shooting, he said, came from his growing opposition to abortion, which he deemed criminal and immoral, and his mounting sense that laws and prosecutors and other abortion opponents were never going to stop Dr. Tiller from performing them.

His lawyers argued that Mr. Roeder possessed, as Kansas law defines it, “an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force,” in the hopes of securing a voluntary manslaughter conviction

topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/r/scott_roeder/index.html

The NY Times said the pro-life movement tried to shut Tiller’s clinic down for 30 years. But nothing worked until Roeder walked up to Tiller on May 31, 2009 and shot him point black . nytimes.com/2009/07/26/us/26tiller.html?_r=1&ref=scottroeder

I think christian including catholic theology say someone can’t do evil in order to do good. However, Tiller’s family closed the abortion clinic. Roeder did stop Tiller from performing any more abortions. There are no more “late term” abortions in Wichita.
 
There are various degrees of tolerance. One simplistic blanket solution will not adequately cover all cases, even in the case of abortion. For example, I am walking by an abortion clinic and I see an unlocked electrical cabinet that feeds the building. If I pass up the opportunity to sabotage the electrical feed, then I am to some extent tolerating abortion.

I don’t see this so much tolerating abortion as tolerating the law that allows abortion. The way to be intolerant of a law that tolerates abortion is not to break the law, but to change it. By doing nothing to fight abortion within the law we are, as you suggest, tolerating the fact of abortion. This means that people have to become more involved in establishing the laws regarding abortion, and not let the villains be in charge of making and protecting a law that tolerates a crime against humanity.
 
Assumptions:
  1. Tolerance is the rightly patient attitude toward someone else’s badness/error.
Note: I would take this a step further and say you recognize a person’s perceived negative behavior and permit its existence.
  1. The defining mark of tolerance is the granting of a certain freedom for the tolerated thing to potentially spread.
Question:
So since some people commit abortion should we tolerate them and (potentially) allow their actions to spread under some possible scenario?

My Answer:
You probably tolerate abortions to a degree. It might be your degree is none, at which point you begin killing abortion doctors. Most people though can tolerate its existence and don’t go out of their way to remove abortion procedures from existence. They might take a more civil approach and kill those procedures legislatively. However, during this time they still tolerate abortion occurring in their area. Will abortion spread during this time of tolerance? Maybe, but this is the price of living in a free country where you get to make choices like should I tolerate abortion.

With regards to the religious aspects, I would think that you should not tolerate anything against the core of your faith up to the point where it would cause you to sin. If you need to sin to not tolerate something then you’re taking a step too far.
 
Question:
So since some people commit abortion should we tolerate them and (potentially) allow their actions to spread under some possible scenario?

My Answer:
You probably tolerate abortions to a degree. It might be your degree is none, at which point you begin killing abortion doctors. Most people though can tolerate its existence and don’t go out of their way to remove abortion procedures from existence. They might take a more civil approach and kill those procedures legislatively. However, during this time they still tolerate abortion occurring in their area. Will abortion spread during this time of tolerance? Maybe, but this is the price of living in a free country where you get to make choices like should I tolerate abortion.

With regards to the religious aspects, I would think that you should not tolerate anything against the core of your faith up to the point where it would cause you to sin. If you need to sin to not tolerate something then you’re taking a step too far

Thank you. That response was what I was looking for. The title of this thread seemed very provocative. If the law permits an action that your faith says is murder, what does a devout person do?

I personally believe Scott Roeder killed Tiller in cold blood and should die in prison. People cannot take the law into their hands. Because their opponents will disregard the law and respond in kind. Killing doctors will lead to pro-life leaders being assassinated. Civil war results.

To keep the rule of law, devout people must tolerate to one degree or another laws that their faith says is wrong. I’m sure someone will bring up nazis and the jews and we’re off the races. But the US in 2011 is not 1940s Germany. The poster above pointed out that people can try to ban abortion through legal means. But until abortion is illegal, it has to be tolerated.
 
I think one relevant thing here is whether the abortion has been committed or not.

If a woman close to you is considering it, you should be very emphatic (in a loving way, which is the only way you’ll ever persuade her anyhow) about how it is wrong and about the value of the life that is within her. In this sense, not tolerate it, but be strongly against it.

However, if it has already been committed, then all that is left to do is to offer support and love, and not condemn the act and treat her rudely. She probably already feels worse than anyone else about it, and what she needs to see is that love and forgiveness can change her life. In this sense, tolerate it, don’t be judgmental, and try to understand the fear and desperation of having an unwanted pregnancy, and how they can lead to bad choices.

As for the abortions of strangers, well, there isn’t much one can do to “not tolerate it”, is there? I live in a country in which it is illegal (Brazil), so if I know of a clinic I would denounce it to the police or something like that. But in other countries it is legal, and what is one gonna do? Threat to kill the doctors? Physically block the mothers from going in the clinic? None of these would work, and would probably only make us look like the bad guys.
 
So the implication is -should we deregulate abortion so as to truly give it the ability to spread? Now the toleration article seemed to be a little unclear about this but it said that something shouldn’t be tolerated if it is something done in bad faith (the sinner knows he’s sinning and does it anyways), or if it threatens public morality (what does this mean?).
 
fakename said:
So the implication is -should we deregulate abortion so as to truly give it the ability to spread?
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The implication from whose post?

If it was meant for me, of course not. It is a good thing to prohibit it and to punish the doctors who perform them. But if it is legal, there is nothing we can do to forcibly stop an abortion; all we can do is try to persuade women not do it, and try to change the law by legal means.
 
is it morally tolerable to tolerate murder of an innocent human being?
 
puzzleannie said:
is it morally tolerable to tolerate murder of an innocent human being?
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Depends on the meaning of “tolerate”.

Innocent human beings, born and unborn, are murdered every day. Should we go out to physically stop these crimes. Would this do much good? Not really. So, in this practical level, yes, we should tolerate these crimes, especially when they involve only strangers.

Now, should we ever condone abortions or encourage a woman to have one? Of course not!

And there is a big psychological difference between abortion and the murder of a born human being, which does change the subjective gravity of the crime. Both should be illegal, of course, but the mother who took her unborn baby’s life is often worthy of more sympathy than the murderer who killed for some money (the doctor who performs abortions might be another story, though he too is not aware that he is killing human beings). I know women who have had abortions; should I treat them as murderers? Not at all.
 
Can we also, at least recognize that abortion may not ever go away (as murder hasn’t gone away)? This seems a little perverse: to want to end something but yet realize that it may never happen. Is it though?
 
fakename said:
Can we also, at least recognize that abortion may not ever go away (as murder hasn’t gone away)? This seems a little perverse: to want to end something but yet realize that it may never happen. Is it though?
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People want to end terrorism too. It’s probably not going to happen, but it’s still a goal worth shooting for right?
 
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