I've been thinking.... abortion isn't the problem

[Jennifer123]

But, Vern, why would a woman make such an evil choice?

Most people aren’t given the facts regarding abortion. We aren’t shown the process or effects, and facts are replaced by euphemisms and non-scientific language meant to manipulate.
Women aren’t shown ultrasounds nor given information on adoption. Even then, many women still know that they are killing an unborn child, rather than disposing of a “clump of cells”. That doesn’t mean they deserve our scorn, they still need charity and compassion, but telling them anything less than the truth does no one any good.

Have you ever read accounts from former abortionists and nurses? Many of these people deal with what they are doing by using sick dark humor and/or self-medicating through drugs and alchohol even while working in order to numb their consciences. That is because they know exactly what is occuring. It is hard to believe these people exist, but we are that depraved as a society.

 

[urban-hermit]

But, Vern, why would a woman make such an evil choice?

Because she doesn’t think the life inside her has any inherent worth. Because she doesn’t think she has any inherent worth, apart from her capacity to earn money, keep a husband/boyfriend who may not want the child.

Sorry I want to chime in here. I agree with Vern. Trying to psycho-analyze is all well and good, but the bottom line is: if abortion were illegal it would be an excellent excuse for women to use so that they could go along with their instinctive tendency not to have an abortion.

Women have suffered from poor self-esteem and men have suffered from cowardice for centuries – we may never solve those problems. Allowing abortion does not mitigate those problems, it compounds them.

The underlying problem is that our culture has successfully cast chastity as a religious precept, rather than a perfectly rational and responsible method of holding society together. Our culture does not want to accept that the moral law is based on rational common sense and human survival, not some “arbitrary” religious commandment or patriarchal regulation.

 

[Larry1700]

Asbestos Mango, you made great points in your initial post (maybe it’s called a “thread starter”?). I don’t know if you’ve read Humanae Vitae, but the problems today were predicted almost 50 years ago. We should have listened.

 

[Jennifer123]

The underlying problem is that our culture has successfully cast chastity as a religious precept, rather than a perfectly rational and responsible method of holding society together. Our culture does not want to accept that the moral law is based on rational common sense and human survival, not some “arbitrary” religious commandment or patriarchal regulation.

Amen to that Urban. Currently this debates rages over “sex education” in the public schools. Abstinence and chastity are not taught, mainly because most people reflexively believe it only to be a religious belief being foced upon kids, and our children continue to suffer.

 

[Genesis315]

The culture of life will never stick without the people having a foundation in the culture of eternal life.

As Pope Benedict said recently, you can’t appreciate or understand the true nature of human dignity when you sever morality and the human being from their Creator.

 

[gam197]

originally posted by Nurse Joy
Because of big corporations we enjoy the standard of living that we do. The best drugs are made by big drug companies. Hospitals are built by big companies using materials that big companies make. The best computers are made by big computer companies. Your car and all the components in it are made by big car companies.

You can hate the corporate world but without it you would be living in a yurt and have an expected lifespan of 50 years. Clearly the companies aren’t the problem.

I am not against corporations or capitalism but I would like to hear Nader speak on them instead of “chicken”. Pharmaceutical companies spend alot on lobbying to give the women pills and potions, not in her best interest. The corporations are not accountable. They don’t care if they don’t pay a fair wage or if they educate their native population as long as they can get college graduates from overseas at a reduced pay check. They fund abortion and gay marriage. It is nice to think people could have a say in hiring people to positions of power in corporations that would care about people but ultimately people don’t have any say. We need to learn how we can make a difference in corporation policy so the bottom line is now always profits.

 

[vern_humphrey]

But, Vern, why would a woman make such an evil choice?

When people make evil choices, they make those choices. A woman who chooses to kill her child chooses to kill it. She isn’t “driven” by low self-esteem or any other reason except self-interest and denial of the humanity of her child.

Or put it another way, when a sane person does something evil, that person is fully responsible for his or her actions.

Because she doesn’t think the life inside her has any inherent worth. Because she doesn’t think she has any inherent worth, apart from her capacity to earn money, keep a husband/boyfriend who may not want the child.

This is what serial killers do – they don’t think their victims have any inherent worth, and see themselves and their desires as the ultimate good.

But we don’t make excuses for serial killers – we hunt them down and take them out of circulation, permanently.

And how do you get the idea that this sort of attitude would be used to justify the Holocaust?

Because abortion is a holocaust. In this country alone, about four times as many innocent people lost their lives as in the whole of the Holocaust. When we adduce psycho-social reasons for killing our fellow man, we separate the act from the actor. In other words we justify or excuse the crime.

Oh, the Nazi Party managed to convince the greater part of the German Population that human life has no inherent worth?

Yes. They down-graded the Jews’ humanity, calling them “unter menschen” (sub-humans) just pro-abortionists donw-grade the unborn child’s humanity, calling it a “parasite” or "pregnancy object, and so on.

Oh, killing six million Jews, plus uncounted other “undesirable types” was OK, then.

Did you see “Judgement at Nuremberg?” In this film (which was fairly accurate) a German judge on trial stands up and says (as he actually said in real life), “We knew what was happening. We saw the trains loaded with Jews going by. We smelled the smoke from the Crematoria.”

Yes – Germans either supported the killing, or acquiesed at it. Those who claimed they didn’t know what was happening word self-imposed blindfolds.

It’s the attitude ingrained in our culture that is the source of most of the social injustices in our society, including abortion that is the problem. All the other problems stem from the objectification of human beings in general.

And until we accept individual responsibility for our actions, we will not have a just society. What boots a society that raises the Minimum Wage a couple of dollars an hour, and still kills between three and four thousand innocent victims a day?

How can there ever be social justice under those conditions?

 

[jimmy]

It’s a symptom. Probably the most horrible one, with euthanasia being horrible 1.a, but it is a symptom of a larger problem.

It’s the same problem that creates the sexual objectification of women, companies paying poverty-level wages to employees, and offshoring any job that can be done more cheaply be a third-world worker getting pennies per hour.

Human beings in our culture have become objects. Production units.

A person’s sole value is determined by the amount of money they are capable of earning, or in their ability to provide a service that can be measured in a monetary value. We have become production units, not considered to have any inherent value or dignity.

An unborn baby or a disabled person is simply a financial liability, to be done away with or kept depending on whether the person responsible for their care considers it expedient.

It is an attitude so deeply ingrained in our culture, I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done to mend it. I even see this attitude in Christians (usually fundamentalist Protestants, especially Calvinists), many of them pro-life. If a person isn’t able to making a living, they are told “work harder, you’re poor because you’re lazy, God commands you to work.” It incredibly demeaning, especially to the working poor, who often perform back-breaking labor in exchange for pathetic wages.

Any thoughts?

I have noticed it too, but I don’t know if it is that or if it is the other way around and that the symptom is the objectification of humanity. You are judged to be good by your value in the economy. I have been in some discussions with atheists. In one discussion we were talking about drug dealers. Part of the discussion was the degree which they should be punished. Some of the posters were of the opinion that they should not be punihsed very severely because they are good citizens. Some of them are judges and police officers and respectible people in the community and therefore they should not be punished severely. This just illustrates how the society has gone.

 

[pnewton]

But, Vern, why would a woman make such an evil choice?

Concupiscence. It is not a popular notion in our modern society, but it is a better answer than any other as to how a mother can justify killing her baby. I refuse to make the murder the victim. If you want to talk about underlying problems of our society, how about the way we have learned to make every evil-doer a victim as we excuse away sin, be it abortion, homosexuality or drug use. If one accepts that abortion is murder of the child, then there is no difference in blaming evil corporate America for abortion than for drive-by shootings; or President John Doe for terrorist attack.

No excuses. No “but, but…” No blamig others. The only proper response that is deserving of mercy is contrition.

I guess I am in Vern’s camp on this.

 

[Grace_Angel]

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

:clapping: :bowdown: :clapping: :bowdown: :clapping: :bowdown: :clapping: :bowdown:

Somebody give that Mango a cigar!! An Asbestos cigar!!

If you read anything written lately by Pope Benedict you will notice that one of his major themes is the inherent worth and dignity of each and every single human person. It is that inherent worth and dignity that is violated by abortion, poverty, violence, terrorisim, war, the death penalty, consumerism, prostitution, casual sex, drugs, etc., etc.

I think you hit the nail directly on the head. Now, this doesn’t mean that we don’t need to treat the symptoms. Certainly, we do. But, if we can somehow breathe that sense of the inherent worth and dignity of each human person back into our society…now that would be something.

And Legaleagle, we begin doing that by “naming” recognising, seeing, the problem first. As the previous poster has done.
The death of the child in the womb has been easy because the inherent value of the human person has not diminished but been slowly almost completely eroded. Women are no longer bearers of the future, they are a commodity. Women are no longer co creators with God, they are co-creators in wealth of the nation, and the wealth they co create is for shareholders and not humanity.
Abortion, stem cell, cloning, interspecies manipulation, euthanasia all become possible because the inherent worth of the “WOMAN” has changed from co-creator with man and God, of the future, to $$$$$ value.
We women have agreed entirely to this development and now society in general and women in particular are reaping the fruits of this. Abortion of infants up to 40 weeks. Pre natal screening which makes Hitler’s medical experiments look like nothing. We have moved from crime to compassion in one biblical generation. Eugenic society is firmly planted.
The past 50 years have seen the human person lose his/her value as an irreplaceable being to an unwanted being. We protect the whales, the birds, the animals, the environment, its even been written that we “marry” our pet animal, but we kill the children and damage much much further the woman who has acceded to the in utero death of her child, and coarsen further the child’s father.
GraceAngel.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I refuse to make the murder the victim.

And that’s the bottom line. As long as people are willing to do that, how can abortion ever be seen for the evil it is? “How can you blame me?!?! I’m the victim here!!”

And the abortionist – a serial murderer by any definition – says, “How can you blame me?!?! I’m **helping **the victims here!!”

 

[system]

The best drugs are made by big drug companies.

Those companies charge Americans triple what they charge Canadians.

Those companies “educate” women in third world countries to use the powdered baby formula instead of breastfeeding. Which ends up with a lot of dead babies due to the simple fact that they have no pure drinking water. But on the plus side, the drug companies can write it off as charity, or more likely, get paid by charities.

Clearly the companies aren’t the problem.

I think it’s multiple guilty parties, the company, their lobbyists, and the politicians who let them get away with murder.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

I think this thread raises an excellent point. However, do you think our society has ever really *had *a sense of inherent worth and dignity of each human person? I mean, even in the early 20th century small children worked in sweat shops 6 days a week/10 hour days for peanuts. It was socially acceptable to beat your children until probably the last 30-40 years. My mother had a teacher slap her across the face when she was 6 and no one thought anything of it. Until the 1970’s, women who were raped in this country were thought to be “asking for it” My point is that I don’t think we need to get human dignity *back. I don’t think we’ve ever had it to begin with.

You’ve gotten it correct, only now that we all have some control of our life to we wish to have more control. If you could ask a slave from any society, or people who live in the 3rd world they would tell you we are crazy to feel this way. We should push for more control of our lives ( Liberty). Unfortunately some believe no progress if pain is involved and that is the real problem! Consider the abortion rate among wanted pregnancies it is extremely low so why do we not work for having wanted pregnancies only? Because that requires people to work in fully educating the whole society, and accepting the liberty of others.

 

[Grace_Angel]

You’ve gotten it correct, only now that we all have some control of our life to we wish to have more control. If you could ask a slave from any society, or people who live in the 3rd world they would tell you we are crazy to feel this way. We should push for more control of our lives ( Liberty). Unfortunately some believe no progress if pain is involved and that is the real problem! Consider the abortion rate among wanted pregnancies it is extremely low so why do we not work for having wanted pregnancies only? Because that requires people to work in fully educating the whole society, and accepting the liberty of others.

Texas Roofer, dont you see that it is the “wantedness” factor which has contributed to this massive holocaust which is abortion?
What is this “Wanted”? The conception means a new human being is conceived, with all the rights to a life. Theis infant was conceived because the parents intercoursed. The bodies of the two people (man and woman) acted according to the law written within it. They copulated, the soil was fertile and a new creation was conceived. Once it is conceived it is no longer a single sperm or a single ovum, but a whole new human being with a soul, and a spirit, and God’s plan for this life and plan for this human’s eternal life. What is this “Wanted?” We are not talking about fish and chips. Or a new garment. or a new car. or a house. We are talking about a human being with an immortal soul. Forever in the plan and mind of God. What is this “wanted” nonsense?
When we accepted the “wanted” factor, then all pregnancy became endangered, because it opened the doorway for the disposal of all “unwanted”. It opened the doorway to all sorts of sexual activity and refusal of the consequences.
Grance Angel.

 

[jack_hawkins]

Evangelisation. I think that’s why John Paul II called for a new evangelisation. We need to re-evangelise our Western cultures and the illness will be cured, the symptoms disappear.

IMO the Catholic Church is almost coy. There is much more emphasis on evangelism in many of the Protestant denominations.
I am going to buy a good quantity of tracts then ask the Priest what best to do with them - I wondered for example about the idea of leaving them on the pews for people to give out.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Texas Roofer, dont you see that it is the “wantedness” factor which has contributed to this massive holocaust which is abortion?
What is this “Wanted”? The conception means a new human being is conceived, with all the rights to a life. Theis infant was conceived because the parents intercoursed. The bodies of the two people (man and woman) acted according to the law written within it. They copulated, the soil was fertile and a new creation was conceived. Once it is conceived it is no longer a single sperm or a single ovum, but a whole new human being with a soul, and a spirit, and God’s plan for this life and plan for this human’s eternal life. What is this “Wanted?” We are not talking about fish and chips. Or a new garment. or a new car. or a house. We are talking about a human being with an immortal soul. Forever in the plan and mind of God. What is this “wanted” nonsense?
When we accepted the “wanted” factor, then all pregnancy became endangered, because it opened the doorway for the disposal of all “unwanted”. It opened the doorway to all sorts of sexual activity and refusal of the consequences.
Grance Angel.

I guess I do not understand your post? If the current abortion rate in the US is >2,000,000, and we educated everybody resulting in (theoretically) zero unplanned/unwanted pregnancies in the year 2012 then how many abortions would you expect in 2012 ?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Those companies charge Americans triple what they charge Canadians.

Those companies “educate” women in third world countries to use the powdered baby formula instead of breastfeeding. Which ends up with a lot of dead babies due to the simple fact that they have no pure drinking water. But on the plus side, the drug companies can write it off as charity, or more likely, get paid by charities.

I think it’s multiple guilty parties, the company, their lobbyists, and the politicians who let them get away with murder.

Don’t over look Canada and the European nations when approtioning blame. They have a trick – they set drug prices at just a little over production cost, and don’t allow R&D costs to be recouped.

As a result, they have choked off most R&D – in the early '90s, they were way ahead of us, collectively, in developing new drugs. Now they’ve fallen way behind – and that slows the overall rate of new drug development and hurts us all.

They force American companies to go along by taking their patents if they refuse – they can do this “legally” by claiming it’s for public health, and by paying a tiny royalty when they manufacture the drugs themselves.

In the process, they throw the whole burden of R&D on the American consumer. They have also killed competition amongst drug manufacturers in their companies, so that generic drugs cost more in Canada and Europe than in the US.

 

[Legal_Eagle]

And that’s the bottom line. As long as people are willing to do that, how can abortion ever be seen for the evil it is? “How can you blame me?!?! I’m the victim here!!”

And the abortionist – a serial murderer by any definition – says, “How can you blame me?!?! I’m **helping **the victims here!!”

It’s a very rare thing for a person to wake up in the morning and say, “I think after my second cup of coffee I’ll go do something evil today.” With rare exceptions no one really thinks that way. People don’t think of themselves as evil. People, generally, don’t want to do evil things. I know several women who have had abortions. Some have later seen the error of that decision, and some have not. None of them are “evil” people. They are, all of them, good decent people who for some reason have chosen to do a horrible thing. I also know business people who exploit the poor for money, I know people who have no compunction about looking at others as sex objects, I know people who have expressed a disire to kill entire cities full of Iraqis in retaliation for IED’s that kill American soldiers. These people are not “evil” either. They’re just average ordinary people who live and work side by side with me every day. So what gives?

If we want to end abortion (and the other sins that we’ve discussed here) we need to start by understanding what it is that makes otherwise decent people do these things. Some of us here believe that the primary problem that leads us to this sorry state of affairs is the failure to recognize the worth and the dignity of every human soul as a unique creation made in the image and likeness of God.

I think the last 30 odd years have shown that we can’t end abortion, exploitation of the poor the objectification of women, war, assisted suicide or the death penalty by pointing our fingers and shouting, “SINNER!!”

But perhaps, little by little, we can infuse our world with a sense of awe and wonder at the uniqueness and the beauty and dignity of each and every person. Born and unborn. Rich and poor. Saint and sinner.

 

[fix]

It’s a symptom. Probably the most horrible one, with euthanasia being horrible 1.a, but it is a symptom of a larger problem.

It’s the same problem that creates the sexual objectification of women, companies paying poverty-level wages to employees, and offshoring any job that can be done more cheaply be a third-world worker getting pennies per hour.

Human beings in our culture have become objects. Production units.

A person’s sole value is determined by the amount of money they are capable of earning, or in their ability to provide a service that can be measured in a monetary value. We have become production units, not considered to have any inherent value or dignity.

An unborn baby or a disabled person is simply a financial liability, to be done away with or kept depending on whether the person responsible for their care considers it expedient.

It is an attitude so deeply ingrained in our culture, I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done to mend it. I even see this attitude in Christians (usually fundamentalist Protestants, especially Calvinists), many of them pro-life. If a person isn’t able to making a living, they are told “work harder, you’re poor because you’re lazy, God commands you to work.” It incredibly demeaning, especially to the working poor, who often perform back-breaking labor in exchange for pathetic wages.

Any thoughts?

There are many rich people who have abortions. I think it is a mistake to make this simply about money.

 

[vern_humphrey]

It’s a very rare thing for a person to wake up in the morning and say, “I think after my second cup of coffee I’ll go do something evil today.” With rare exceptions no one really thinks that way. People don’t think of themselves as evil.

No doubt then Joseph Megelle was performing his grisly experiments in the concentration camps, he convinced himself he was doing “good.”

No doubt there are people who wake up in the morning and say, “I think after my second cup of coffee I’ll go do something good today, like sell drugs to the kids in grammar school.”

People, generally, don’t want to do evil things. I know several women who have had abortions. Some have later seen the error of that decision, and some have not. None of them are “evil” people. They are, all of them, good decent people who for some reason have chosen to do a horrible thing.

You could say the same about serial killers. After all, Hitler liked children and dogs.

I also know business people who exploit the poor for money, I know people who have no compunction about looking at others as sex objects, I know people who have expressed a disire to kill entire cities full of Iraqis in retaliation for IED’s that kill American soldiers. These people are not “evil” either. They’re just average ordinary people who live and work side by side with me every day. So what gives?

What gives is you are defining deviancy out of existance.

If we want to end abortion (and the other sins that we’ve discussed here) we need to start by understanding what it is that makes otherwise decent people do these things. Some of us here believe that the primary problem that leads us to this sorry state of affairs is the failure to recognize the worth and the dignity of every human soul as a unique creation made in the image and likeness of God.

To end abortion, stop condoning it and making excuses for those who do it.

I think the last 30 odd years have shown that we can’t end abortion, exploitation of the poor the objectification of women, war, assisted suicide or the death penalty by pointing our fingers and shouting, “SINNER!!”

The last 300 years have shown we can’t end murder, rape, robbery and similar crimes. But that doesn’t excuse us from doing our best to minimize them.

But perhaps, little by little, we can infuse our world with a sense of awe and wonder at the uniqueness and the beauty and dignity of each and every person. Born and unborn. Rich and poor. Saint and sinner.

Not as long as we refuse to see these grisley acts for what they are and make excuses for those who perpetrate them.