Maybe not as Pro choice as I thought

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hmmm… I’m learning so much here. I took you guys up on the advice I’ve seen you give others and spoke to my priest Sunday. Thankfully, he didn’t judge me but just listened. You see, after coming here, I thought maybe I wasn’t truely Catholic.

As I spoke about being pro-choice, a revelation came to me. Maybe I’m not so pro-choice after all. I remember when a co-worker decided to have an abortion a few years ago. As much as I wouldn’t judge her for making the decision, I kept asking her to wait. I wish I’d been closer to her and that she would have confided more in me. I wanted her to really think before she acted. After she went through with the abortion, I felt as though someone had put a knife in my heart. I wished so much that I could have helped her to have the baby instead.

The priest listened to me tell this story, then he patiently said to me, " you’re not as pro-choice as you think you are". I believe, if the situation hadn’t been so serious, he might have winked 😉

Just wanted to let you know, your words are coming through. I may not be as, um, conservative as most of you. Maybe, just maybe I might not be so liberal either 🙂

Hope I haven’t been to trollish. I am here to learn.

Kim
 
Congratulations. If the abortion hadn’t been the descruction of a human life you might not have cared. God bless you.
 
Congratulations! You are commiting the increasingly rare act of thinking through the principles on your own, instead of merely adopting positions dictated to you by others or deciding based on feelings.

How CAN it be a precious baby when the mom WANTS her, but just a blob of tissue when she doesn’t? What makes people think that the first breath of air instantaneously turns a blob into a human? At what point in fetal development IS there a clear and quantifiable change in basic substance and character, a hard line dividing personhood from non-person?

Keep thinking it through. Try to separate the feelings from the facts and reason from the facts.

But be warned. It gets hard on the pride to discover that 400-1800 year old dead guys have almost always beaten you to the rational conclusion at the end of the process.
 
Kim,

When I converted, the “pro-choice/anti-abortion” debate (the wording should be a strong clue as to how I was raised) was one of the last Church teachings for me to embrace. I kept wondering how we could force our beliefs on to other people.

I was training for a marathon at the time, and so had a lot of time for thinking. This is what I came up with (or, more probably, what the Holy Spirit led me to) that literally made me stop in my tracks:

I was of the “I feel abortion is wrong, but it is also wrong for government to take away a woman’s right to choose” bent. Then, I started thinking about the role of government at all. What, ideally, should it do? Legislate more tax breaks for big business? Nope. Cut budgets that affect the arts, children’s programs, education? Nope.

Well, ideally, I thought, somewhere during mile 6 of my 15 mile run, government should exist to protect its citizens, and to ensure them safety, so the populace can be productive and contribute back to society. That’s why we have police. Or firefighters.

So how, then, could government officals and lawmakers not extend that protection to the most vulnerable of its citizens? How could government find it acceptable to say that we don’t have the legal choice to smoke pot, but we do have the legal choice to abort our children?

It was there, somewhere during my run, that I stopped, and realized that I was no longer even nominally pro-choice. I couldn’t say that I found abortion to be wrong, but still want to protect other women’s “right” to it, any more than I could say that child pornography was wrong, but others could use it if they wished.

Anyway, I can totally relate to your change of heart, and the road it’s leading you down. God bless!

Cari
 
Cari said:
Kim,

When I converted, the “pro-choice/anti-abortion” debate (the wording should be a strong clue as to how I was raised) was one of the last Church teachings for me to embrace. I kept wondering how we could force our beliefs on to other people.

I was training for a marathon at the time, and so had a lot of time for thinking. This is what I came up with (or, more probably, what the Holy Spirit led me to) that literally made me stop in my tracks:

I was of the “I feel abortion is wrong, but it is also wrong for government to take away a woman’s right to choose” bent. Then, I started thinking about the role of government at all. What, ideally, should it do? Legislate more tax breaks for big business? Nope. Cut budgets that affect the arts, children’s programs, education? Nope.

Well, ideally, I thought, somewhere during mile 6 of my 15 mile run, government should exist to protect its citizens, and to ensure them safety, so the populace can be productive and contribute back to society. That’s why we have police. Or firefighters.

So how, then, could government officals and lawmakers not extend that protection to the most vulnerable of its citizens? How could government find it acceptable to say that we don’t have the legal choice to smoke pot, but we do have the legal choice to abort our children?

It was there, somewhere during my run, that I stopped, and realized that I was no longer even nominally pro-choice. I couldn’t say that I found abortion to be wrong, but still want to protect other women’s “right” to it, any more than I could say that child pornography was wrong, but others could use it if they wished.

Anyway, I can totally relate to your change of heart, and the road it’s leading you down. God bless!

Cari
Click to expand...
The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways and at the most unexpected time, doesn’t he?
 
I too went through a period of grief for people close to me and their aborted babies, because I thought if I had spoken out more strongly, had a closer relationship with them, let them know how much I would be willing to do for them, including raise their unwanted child, and just generally be more available and approachable, maybe they would not have made those decisions. It does no good in the long run to ruminate on that, except to try and emulate those virtues more. for all of us there is a curve of learning, experience, and strengthening of resolve.
 
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