Pew: 77% of Catholics who are Democrats say abortion should be legal

  • Thread starter Thread starter mercyalways
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
JimG said:
No need to treat every human being the same, as long as we don’t separate out one group as eligible to be killed at will.
Click to expand...
But the point is that at different arbitrary ages, people have different legal rights.

And even in the Church there are arbitrary age cutoffs–“age of reason” or “eligibility for marriage” or “age for eligibility for confirmation.”

Again, my point is simply that the idea of an arbitrary age to have certain legal and/or religious rights is not a new idea. It’s ancient.
 
Freddy said:
Some of you guys really don’t get the difference between some thing being human and some one being a human being. It’s been explained a number of times so I’m putting this down not so much as a lack of understanding of the difference but rather an unwillingness to accept it.
Click to expand...
Well there is a moral divide.
 
Last edited:
Freddy said:
40.png
Randolph:
40.png
Freddy:
Some of you guys really don’t get the difference between some thing being human and some one being a human being. It’s been explained a number of times so I’m putting this down not so much as a lack of understanding of the difference but rather an unwillingness to accept it.
Click to expand...
Freddy, perhaps this simple experiment would help you to understand human life:

Why don’t you go ask your own mother (or any mothers) what it was like carrying you (or anyone) in her womb? I can assure you that your mother would say something like; “When I was pregnant with “you” (Freddy the person)—NOT when I was pregnant with “something” like you…

Don’t make light of the early process of human life development by referring human life as “something”. This is a pathetic argument laid out by abortionists to label early human life development as “something” so that they could justify abortion.

Human life begins at conception. This means that at conception a human soul is also formed—although not yet a fully developed person.
Click to expand...
We can look at it from the other perspective as well. I know a woman who lost her pregnancy very early on and was depressed about it as she and her husband had been trying for a baby. But it was a case of ‘ah well, we’ll keep trying’. And I know another woman who lost her child very late in tbe pregnancy. And she wasn’t merely depressed. She was grief stricken.

Do you see the difference in attitude between the two pregnancies? Can you appreciate that people consider there to be a substantial difference between what a woman is carrying just after conception and just before giving birth?
Click to expand...
Or is it merely like the difference between me on hearing about the death of someone’s grandmother who I have known for a few weeks and the death of my own grandmother who I had a decades- long relationship with?

Some people, especially those trying hard to conceive, take even the earliest miscartiage very hard. Then there are those who, perhaps having been the opposite of desperate for a child, take it much less to heart.

Simple variation in reactions explainable for many reasons, none of them to do with the unborn being any more or less a human being.

But as was.pointed out, mothers don’t tend to think or speak differently about a born child.at any stage of the pregnancy as opposed to after birth. They will attribute a degree of personality even to the unborn, calm.as opposed to active for example. The instinct is to see the unborn as the same.person as the born child it later becomes.
 
Last edited:
Shakuhachi said:
…

I think many people may identify Catholic but may not attend Mass at all.
Click to expand...
A work associate said she was only marrying in the Catholic Church because her grandmother would be upset otherwise. She married a non-practicing Muslim.
 
vz71 said:
And what is the scientific basis for this denial?
Click to expand...
As we know, there isn’t any. I think for some, the term “human being” may only be applied to human offspring when appearance and perhaps some other characteristics satisfy some conditions. So the problem is one of terminology. A human being now comes to refer only to human entities having reached a certain (not well-defined) stage of development.

And morality is only relevant in acts directed at that entity when it is a “human being”. It is a kind of sophistry.
 
Last edited:
vz71 said:
40.png
Freddy:
No. It’s not.
Click to expand...
And what is the scientific basis for this denial?
Click to expand...
You are not reading what I write. I have never said that there is a scientific basis for it. But if you’d like to look for any scientific literature that describes a zygote as a small person then I’ll wait bere while you do that.
 
Rau said:
40.png
vz71:
And what is the scientific basis for this denial?
Click to expand...
As we know, there isn’t any. I think for some, the term “human being” may only be applied to human offspring when appearance and perhaps some other characteristics satisfy some conditions. So the problem is one of terminology. A human being now comes to refer only to human entities having reached a certain (not well-defined) stage of development.
Click to expand...
That it’s not well defined is incorrect. What a woman is carrying a day before she gives birth can most definitely be described as a person. A day after conception? No.

And there is no bright line that says at 9:00am at such and such day it changes from one to the other.
 
Last edited:
Why is it that any time after a baby passes through the birth canal it is a person, but not at ‘some point’ before?

What exactly does a human person, a human being, ‘do’?

The human being is conceived. From the moment of that conception the human being or person ‘keeps growing’ until the moment he (or she) dies, when the growing ‘stops’ here on earth.

At every moment from conception on the human being is developing as a human being. As the child grows in the womb the head, torso, and limbs develop into the shape they will maintain. The brain, heart, liver, stomach; the nerves, blood vessels, eyes, hair. . .all grow.

At birth, the infant continues to grow; the difference being that the lungs are now developed enough to ‘breathe’ on their own, and the child’s gastrointestinal system is developed enough to take in nourishment outside the amniotic fluid and umbilical cord.

As the child ages his or her legs gain strength to carry the body independently. He learns to control fine motor and gross motor skills. He learns language.

As the teen develops his growth plates close.

At some point the young adult will begin to ‘lose’ some cells while still creating others. Hair and skin cells continue to grow and die and grow regularly. Melanin or lack can cause hair to darken or whiten.

The mature adult begins to lose some skills; reflexes begin to slow but the body can be functioning at a peak due to long years of practice, and the mind as well.

The older adult may start to develop problems due to loss of bone, joint wear and tear, culminations of overwork and poor diet leading to things like heart failure and diabetes, chronic kidney disease, stress injuries like carpal tunnel.

Very old adults lose tissue (wasting), height (spinal cord compressions/dowager’s hump), can develop dementia, lose sense of taste and smell, develop cataracts. . . Yet, as with earlier stages, are still functioning. Some age more rapidly than others. Some adjust to changes; strokes perhaps having a ‘right-handed person’ whose dominant side is affected learning to write with the left hand; crutches or canes can let a person with balance issues continue daily walking.

All through to death, a human person is going from day to day growing and developing. Why is a day ‘inside the womb’ different from a day ‘outside?”
 
stpurl said:
Why is it that any time after a baby passes through the birth canal it is a person, but not at ‘some point’ before?
Click to expand...
Maybe we should talk about the science and some definitions.

An abortion is when a pregnancy is deliberately terminated. When a sperm enters an egg, a zygote is formed. When the zygote reaches the uterus it becomes a blastocyst. Pregnancy hasn’t started yet and it won’t for about 50% of fertilised eggs. The body simply rejects them.

Now most women know this. They quite often study the process before getting pregnant. So they know that there’s an even chance they won’t get pregnant, all other things being equal, because the blastocyst will be rejected.

Have we got a person yet? Do you know many women who grieve over their lost children simply because the reproductive process isn’t that efficient? Do women become traumatised if they’ve been trying to get pregnant for some time because there’s an excellent chance that a fertilised egg didn’t make it? Did the fertilised egg have a soul? Or does it get one when it becomes a blastocyst and actually implants itself into the uterine wall? Because that is when the pregnancy starts.

Have we all got this? You cannot terminate a pregnancy if it hasn’t started. So what a woman’s body will do is to prevent a pregnancy from occuring.

And consider IVF. When the egg is fertilised in the test tube, do we instantly have a person? If we have a dozen fertilised eggs do we have a dozen people? And what does a woman decide to do with frozen eggs (actually blastocysts)? Is she traumatised that they will be allowed to thaw and ‘regress’ to use the medical term? No. So she is obviously treating a blastocyst utterly differently to a baby that is almost full term.

If the egg doesn’t implant properly, does she grieve as if she lost a full term baby? Obviously not. The parents simply try again. She treats a group of cells completely differently to a full term baby.

Surely this is obvious to all.
 
Last edited:
Freddy said:
That it’s not well defined is incorrect.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Human being offspring are at once human beings. Very young, very different, but human beings. That some parents feel ok about killing their offspring while very young is a function of their thinking.
 
Freddy said:
Do you see the difference in attitude between the two pregnancies? Can you appreciate that people consider there to be a substantial difference between what a woman is carrying just after conception and just before giving birth?
Click to expand...
Well …that may be about time and connection.
Even in a pregnancy that develops normally.
One may be fascinated as from the very start , or even have a certain “ delay” in fully “ landing “ ,fully realizing that one is pregnant, and then the bonding and connection and interaction with the baby becomes deeper and closer as time passes. The relationship becomes closer.As with any person …
See ,all who you Freddy are was meant from the very beginning . It is a bit indescribable but it is you Freddy and nobody else, who was there from the very start.
It is very moving for a mom sincerely.The most extraordinary with each and every child one has had…A wonder.
 
Last edited:
graciew said:
40.png
Freddy:
Do you see the difference in attitude between the two pregnancies? Can you appreciate that people consider there to be a substantial difference between what a woman is carrying just after conception and just before giving birth?
Click to expand...
Well …that may be about time and connection.
Even in a pregnancy that develops normally.
One may be fascinated as from the very start , or even have a certain “ delay” in fully “ landing “ ,fully realizing that one is pregnant, and then the bonding and connection and interaction with the baby becomes deeper and closer as time passes.
Click to expand...
Exactly right. But if I reverse that and suggest that the connection becomes less and less the earlier we go in process, it’s denied. How can it become deeper without it being less deep earlier on? To the point when a woman can have an abortion without feeling that she’s losing a baby.
 
That may have psychological even hormonal explanations.I don’t know…I know cases and cases . Different as every pregnancy and every person and how different bodies react too to these changes.
What I know is that is was you and nobody else but you from the very start.
And that is beyond my ability to put into words.
 
Last edited:
Freddy said:
To the point when a woman can have an abortion without feeling that she’s losing a baby.
Click to expand...
Precisely that a woman loses her baby via an abortion that hurts her so deeply emotionally. I know for a fact through my volunteer work that many women never recovers from this emotional scar and guilt. Having nightmares, suffering through insomnia, going through deep depression, suffering from withdrawal, being despondently, etc… are among common symptoms. Why? Because she knows so well that her baby was a human being—not just “something” as you have insisted.

I have yet even mention the gruesome death that her baby suffered. Freddy, for you to refer the nature of a human being in the early stages of human development in his/her mother’s womb is quite wrong and in fact quite despicable.

Freddy, as a matter of faith, hope and charity, I will now sign off this thread and pray for you and perhaps even for your conversion. I wish you well, and may God bless you and your loved ones.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top