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KathleenElsie
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Yes and all those that advocate abortion and killing of the disabled.
Peter Singer Defends His Views on Killing Disabled Babies Via Infanticide
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ribozyme
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As an aside, I do believe that scientific ingenuity is much more potent than “the grace, and mercy of God.” One question is, how was polio erradicated from the human condition? Did prayer help, or the efforts of Jonas Salk?
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Lischou
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Absolutely, without reservation!
Lisa
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Lischou
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Kendy
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First of all, I am happy to be answering this question from a non-catholic.
Second, it is God who creates us, including our human mind. We have God to thank for for everything including our own. God created our minds, and it is not we who discover, it is God who works through us. Also, God does not have act in ways outside the laws of nature. When we pray, God often responds through very natural means. He is the author of nature and can choose to place within nature the chemicals necessary to create medicines.
The rising sun is as much a miracle as the suddenly disappearing brain tumor.
Kendy
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mlchance
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Abortion is not a religious issue. It is a human rights issue.
godlessprolifers.org/home.html
– Mark L. Chance.
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Liberalsaved
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Where is Church teaching against correcting birth defects in the womb without harming mother or baby?
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Liberalsaved
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No…over-crowding is a serious issue leading to starvation and poverty that can be cured with education about options for families, primarily in third-world countries populated by people who cannot afford proper schooling. A responsibility to life includes making sure there’s enough space and resources to go around, and that families aren’t having multiple children they cannot take care of.I bolded the part that alarms me.
Your kidding, right??
If I am insane for thinking it prudent to plan to have a number of children that a family and the resources they have to work with can reasonably support…then I better check myself into the funny farm now.
But of course, that’s not what you got from my post. Please, re-read, and tell me in exactly what point I advocated abortion as a means of population control.
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Kendy
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ribozyme
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I think you are representing my views correctly. I think that I disagree with some of Singer’s views of abortion. Personally I think killing a fetus, except in the case of rape (adoption is a better solution to this problem in my opinion) or when the baby threatens the life of its mother, is wrong if the decision to abort is based on the fact that raising a child would be an inconvience to the parents. I prefer this type of abortion to be abolished. Killing an infant or fetus because the parents deem him to be an inconvience is somewhat akin to Action T4, as the Nazis justified the killing of the disabled because they were an inconvience to Nazi Germany.
Abortion is not a religious issue. It is a human rights issue.
godlessprolifers.org/home.html
– Mark L. Chance.
The instance of a congenital defect makes the situation much more complicated though.
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Liberalsaved
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The issue here is I am talking about safe medical advances, and several people are choosing to interpret everything as I say as being for what they think of as “Drive-thru” abortions. Please, read what I actually posted, especially the part where I disagreed with the poster I originally responded to. Take what I actually said from what I said, and not a very different interpretation. Then I’ll be happy to discuss it.
As for my other opinions here, I beleive discussing things posted in other threads violates the stay-on-topic rule. But I’m not evasive; if you wish to discuss something with me in the thread on those other topics I’ve spoken to, I’ll be glad to discuss those things there.
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Liberalsaved
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Adoption is the ultimate solution to many problems, including over-crowding. It’s unfortunate that many people have pre-conceived notions about adoption, especially about adopting children of a different race, religion or background, than themselves. I really feel to have a child is seen as a kind of immortality and, in less extreme cases, a heritage, and people want a younger version of themselves to raise. It’s really too bad, because adoption is far and away the best solution currently available. Yet I have had people tell me flat out they think it’s better to have “your own” kids, despite countless proofs that nurture and not nature shapes a person. They can never give me any satisfactory reason why a child with your genetics is superior to raise than one without.
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Kendy
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I don’t want to discuss any past posts. I only wanted to point out that my comment stems from more than this one post.
As for staying on topic, the topic was Peter Singer’s promotion of infanticide. Instead of the expressing Christian horror at Singer’s comment, you decided to lament the fact that medical advances might be stifled by “ethical” views. Thus, is it all that suprising that one might wonder whether medical advances will respect the dignity of human life? particularly, in light of your other posts, it doesn’t seem out of bounds.
Lastly, the intend of my post was to ask you a question about faith not to discuss whether the church will interfere with medical advances. I am actually much more interested in your thoughs about Jesus than your thoughts about abortion. You may choose to answer it or not, but that is my only real concern.
Kendy
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mommyof4
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Ok, up to what age is it morally acceptable? One day? One week? One month or year? Five years? Ten? Twenty?
How about the person who has Parkinson’s, Alzheimers, Diabetes: when do we decide that their existance makes a “situation much more complicated?”
I have a feeling you have not been around many people with congenital birth defects. Sorry if I’m wrong, but I just think that you would not be asking these types of questions.
Legalized abortion has started a very dangerous and slippery slope towards infantcide, euthenasia.
Often it is when we try to reason past what we know is right that things become complicated.
A human life is a human life is a human life.
It does not get any more complicated then that.
The only complication should be in how to preserve the life, not in how (or why) to end it.
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JimG
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The disability rights group, Not Dead Yet (notdeadyet.org) has a particular interest in Professor Singers theories of ethics. For according to him, many of them should not be alive today: They should have been killed long ago, either before or after birth. Needless to say, this position does not sit well with them: notdeadyet.org/docs/anotatedsinger.html
Harriet McBryde Johnson, a severely disabled lawyer, wrote an article (“Unspeakable Conversations”) for the New York Times Magazine several years ago describing her meeting and conversations with Prof. Singer:
“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was. . . “
You can read the full article here:
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9401EFDC113BF935A25751C0A9659C8B63
Harriet McBryde Johnson, a severely disabled lawyer, wrote an article (“Unspeakable Conversations”) for the New York Times Magazine several years ago describing her meeting and conversations with Prof. Singer:
“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was. . . “
You can read the full article here:
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9401EFDC113BF935A25751C0A9659C8B63
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SeekerJen
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This guy’s not new, nor is he a fake for better press. I remember discussing him in my undergrad ethics course 5 years ago, and I’d heard of him well before that. He’s consistent in his views, I’ll give him that much (and that’s all I’ll give him).Interesting, but I don’t trust anything from WND unless I see it corroborated some place else!
I do agree with him in that it’s surprising that pro-aborts who have no problem killing a disabled child in utero a day before that child is born are suddenly up in arms about killing it the day after birth. Seriously, what’s the difference? Murder is murder. The only difference is the environment in which the baby resides.
I’m only surprised that his viewpoint hasn’t been more widely embraced by those who would wish to wipe out all “inferiority” in the genome by pre-birth selection and murder. In this, we’re no better than the people in India and China who abort baby girls. Do we seriously think that by selectively aborting any baby who appears to have a birth defect, that we will be rid of all genetic problems, or that we should be rid of all such problems? One, that shows a complete ignorance of the mechanisms of genetics (Mendelian or otherwise), and two, a complete lack of respect and compassion for human life. Three, it is becoming frighteningly similar to Germany in the late 1930s and early-to-mid 1940s. There are already people in this country who are completely supportive of violent murder of a child up to the point of natural birth (in a manner that we would not even use to put a vicious adult criminal to death). Where does it end? Why not use the same technique on born children? How about babies who do not manifest problems until they are older, such as children with Rett’s syndrome, or autistic children? Do we kill them when they manifest their disease, even though it will be several months post-birth? Why not kids who develop Type 1 diabetes mellitus when they are teenagers, or the women who develop breast cancer when they are in their 20s? Should they be killed to prevent them from reproducing and passing on their “defective” genes, or to prevent them from using up expensive medical resources?
This is all very frightening and disturbing to me.
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alsligh
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ribozyme - I appreciate that you have made a strong effort to be respectful, reasonable, and unemotional in your posts within this thread. I hope that you will consider what I am going to say to you to be respectful of you, as well. You are obviously a very intelligent young person (didn’t you say you were 16?), and it is encouraging to see a young person engaged in critical thinking in an age where many young people are so much “fluff.” However, I do believe that your thinking is clouded by a combination of youthful inexperience and too much critical thinking on your part. It does seem (especially when you are young) that eliminating hardship and suffering should be society’s main aim, but that type of thinking attempts to uniformly assign an objective standard to all aspects of life and society, which is, in reality, neither possible nor desirable. I believe that when you are older and have experienced more, you will grow in your thinking and understanding. I was weaned on math, science, and logic, so I can see where you are coming from, but now that I am 37 and the parent of a disabled child I also am wise(r).
Although I would certainly prefer that my daughter not have this disability, I could provide you today with a laundry list of reasons why her disability is a blessing to me, my daughter, our family, our friends, and even strangers. Killing her at any point would have been a tremendous loss to the world - and she is still young! The crucible of human suffering exists for a reason - a good reason - and some of us are closer to the flame than others. God be with you in your quest for truth. If you continue to seek it, you will find it. My prayer is that you find it through study, rather than through painful experience.
JimG - Thanks for the info on Not Dead Yet. As the parent of a disabled child, I am always looking for info on people who have defied odds.
Peace and joy,
Andi
Although I would certainly prefer that my daughter not have this disability, I could provide you today with a laundry list of reasons why her disability is a blessing to me, my daughter, our family, our friends, and even strangers. Killing her at any point would have been a tremendous loss to the world - and she is still young! The crucible of human suffering exists for a reason - a good reason - and some of us are closer to the flame than others. God be with you in your quest for truth. If you continue to seek it, you will find it. My prayer is that you find it through study, rather than through painful experience.
JimG - Thanks for the info on Not Dead Yet. As the parent of a disabled child, I am always looking for info on people who have defied odds.
The only difference in the two that I’ve been able to discern is that killing a baby after birth is something that most people just can’t stomach (yet). Aborting an unborn child is more of a “behind closed doors” event, whereas killing a baby already living is something out in the open for all to see. It seems to me that many of the abortion-friendly types don’t actually have a true moral objection to killing a newborn. That’s a subjective observation on my part, not a factual assertion, as I’m sure they would vehemently disagree with me.
Peace and joy,
Andi
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Pug
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What ought a couple do who is already married and then they find out about a genetic issue? I think the size of the “risk” might be a factor for someone making the choice. What risk factor is required to cause you to say they may not marry? One in four, one in ten, one in a thousand? Is your train of thought that it is immoral to have sex when there might come a child who might suffer?
This issue is close to home for me. So if I sound tense, that is why. Oh, well, I probably always sound tense, but I am really harmless. I do want to know how you think about this issue, though.
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Andrew_11
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Why are you so certain the the physically and mentally handicapped are destined for a life of pain. There are many people who aren’t “normal” who live perfectly happy lives. Its people like Hitler and Stalin who support the murder of these people for eugenic purposes, and because they do not consider these people “useful”.
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