Pointless pro-choice statements

[Filius_Prodigus]

What I don’t get is that most Catholics–especially around here–don’t think a a fertilized egg ‘will become a human being,’ they think it already is a human being (and a person) for all moral, legal and ontological purposes. As such, abortion wouldn’t be preventing (i.e. to keep something from arising) but killing a human person.

When I think about preventing, I think in condoms and such. I don’t agree with those against contraception, because, if a person can’t keep their pants on, well at least use a barrier or do something still very kinky so you won’t have penetration.

For me going against contraception is a religious stance. Catholics don’t use them, just like Jews don’t eat pork or mix dairy with meat. And that’s very fine. “Koshers” are a form of worship.

An unborn, on the other hand, is a human being in formation, with unique DNA, structure and unity as an individual, even if it depends on her/his mother for survival. If dependence means you do not have the human right to live, well, hospital intensive care units are full of people in that situation! Why not disconnect them all?

Hippocrates’ Oath is against both. And it’s a good ethical groundwork to go by. Theology aside, I find no secular reason to support abortion in any way.

I understand people who do not believe in God or any religion −people just think different and that’s fine. But when you don’t hold at least human life sacred, something isn’t quite ticking in you.

 

[ThomasToo]

I agree with them but you don’t, so saying a fertilized egg or fetus( I don’t know if you would consider them the same) is a human being to you would be a waste of time, and since I’m a poor typist that almost an eternity. Basicly it goes like this. Before sex,(or fertilization, whichever term you prefer) No human, just cells. After sex, (or fertilization) human, or at the very least something that if left alone by nature or man will become a fully functioning adult human being. By aborting it, you prevent something that, at the very least, is well on it’s way to becoming a fully functional adult human being. You are ending a human existance. If anyone has the right to do that then I can’t understand how they wouldn’t have the right to end anyones existance at any point in that existance. The only safe choice is to assume human existance begins with conception. I’m sorry but my poor language skill don’t allow me to make it any clearer to you.

That’s ok; I didn’t want to presume it was a language problem lest I come off like a complete sod. I understand what you’re saying now but I fear the language gap will make continuing this discussion in the depth needed impossible.

 

[pete_29]

That’s ok; I didn’t want to presume it was a language problem lest I come off like a complete sod. I understand what you’re saying now but I fear the language gap will make continuing this discussion in the depth needed impossible.

I should have paid more attention in school and I wouldn’t have the trouble I have forming “wurds 'n stuff”.

 

[ThomasToo]

Hippocrates’ Oath is against both. And it’s a good ethical groundwork to go by. Theology aside, I find no secular reason to support abortion in any way.

I understand people who do not believe in God or any religion −people just think different and that’s fine. But when you don’t hold at least human life sacred, something isn’t quite ticking in you.

The Hippocratic Oath is 2500 years old; there aren’t very many bronze age beliefs we hold onto and that oath is typically amongst those we don’t and I would say for good reason but that’s not really germane here. The secular reasons is that people who don’t believe in gods–or those who believe in different gods or even some who believe in your God–don’t agree that a human life has rights from the moment of conception and many of us don’t even think it is intelligible to attribute rights to a non-viable fetus. Attempts, therefore, to forge Catholic philosophy into national law are misguided for many reasons–both internal and external to Americanized democracy–but most notably on First Amendment establishment grounds.

I would also say that you have it flipped around; you shouldn’t need a secular reason to support abortion but a secular reason for a coercive law outlawing abortion (and life/personhood/rights begin at conception isn’t secular).

 

[ThomasToo]

I should have paid more attention in school and I wouldn’t have the trouble I have forming “wurds 'n stuff”.

Hahaha. No worries, we didn’t all have the poor social life that leads to a childhood (and adolescence… and young adulthood… and adulthood) with little to do but read all but perpetually.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I wouldn’t call being bound to a bed, hooked up to a stranger ‘mere inconvenience.’

Pregnancy is much less extreme than that.

I don’t know that Catholic moral teaching obliges someone in that circumstance but I’d need to do more reading on the subject.

I know that personally I would stay attached or strapped to the violinist. Granted, I’d be upset and rather bitter, but I wouldn’t let the violinist DIE.

I’m not saying the question is difficult; I’m saying it’s specious. It’s like, as I said above, ‘have you stopped beating your wife?’

Like I consider the violinist argument specious?

 

[Et_Cetera]

No, not at all. An abortion doesn’t “de-rape” the woman. It just gets rid of the evidence that she was raped. PP doesn’t inform the police about these cases. The woman is cast back out into the environment where she was raped. There’s a chance she will be raped again. 43% of abortions are repeats. Therefore, an abortion safeguards a rapist.

There is some bizarre “logic” going on in this thread.

 

[The_Reginator]

I used this example above, if there is philosophical doubt whether a cow is a person (i.e. the bearer of the right not to be killed) then we should all stop eating meat until the discussion is settled?

I’m 100% certain that at least for a large part of pregnancy a zygote/embryo/fetus isn’t a person. So now am I in the clear?

Hearing this argument (over and over) I’m curious how proximate the potential killing has to be for it to be morally significant. Diamonds are the cause of all manner of death in Africa so should engagement jewelry be cultured, imitation or laboratory grown? Should SUVs–or any gas powered vehicle–be outlawed because of the deaths oil has caused in the Middle East? I’m not trying to be belligerent here but I’m curious because especially in a global economy we are tangentially–knowingly or not–tied to all manner of atrocities and I would be interested to hear how far moral culpability reaches in your view.

You may be 100% convinced. Did the people lynching black slaves believe that they were killing a human? Many did not. Does that put them in the clear? They still committed murder.

How proximate does the potential killing have to be?
When an abortion is performed it is done in the same way as any direct killing. We are not discussing the possible outcomes of deadly fumes. Abortion is an act directed at one single living organism. I am not even considering the effect of mercury poisoning on the unborn for the purposes of this discussion. Your examples do not relate to the topic at hand.

 

[JimG]

If I may be so forward, is your parish one of those that is formerly Anglican? I’d be interested to learn more about Anglican Use if you know anything or would recommend any resources.

Sorry for being radically off topic…

My parish is not an Anglican use parish, nor is his. But the married priest in question was a former married Episcopal priest who became Catholic, and was later ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

 

[JimG]

So men cannot care about their children?

So if a bear takes my child and is about to chew it, I should ask the bear?

Surreal!

It’s a human life. There is no need to kill it if the mother doesn’t want it. If the woman cannot tolerate the mere existence of her son/daughter living in an adoptive family for instance, she has a big emotional problem there. It’s beyond the question of an absence of love, that strikes me as hate.

If I don’t love you, I just let you be. Goodbye. But it takes real death-wish not to tolerate someone living even if you will never see them again. Jeez even when I abhor someone I just think “Sayonara, I hope I don’t see you again, have a nice life AWAY from me!”, without death wish. Killing an unborn strikes me as way beyond that, inhumane and quite sick.

I don’t disagree with you. My post was in response to a pro-choice link which said in essence that virtually all pro-lifers are men, the implication being that women are naturally pro-choice. That is not the case. In fact many outspoken opponents of abortion are women.

 

[JimG]

I think the pro-life position is pretty consistent, and it is that human beings do have a beginning, and that beginning is at conception.

I don’t really see the logic in saying that a human being begins at 3 months, or at 6 months, or 9 months, or birth plus three months, or at age 4. Those are all arbitrary points, made in order to ease our conscience when we wish to kill that which is living, and is a distinct human individual.

 

[JimG]

It would appear that the Vatican has also taken this position.

“12. Any discrimination based on the various stages of life is no more justified than any other discrimination. The right to life remains complete in an old person, even one greatly weakened; it is not lost by one who is incurably sick. The right to life is no less to be respected in the small infant just born than in the mature person. In reality, respect for human life is called for from the time that the process of generation begins. From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother, it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already.”
Declaration on Procured Abortion, par.12.

 

[The_Reginator]

I think the pro-life position is pretty consistent, and it is that human beings do have a beginning, and that beginning is at conception.

I don’t really see the logic in saying that a human being begins at 3 months, or at 6 months, or 9 months, or birth plus three months, or at age 4. Those are all arbitrary points, made in order to ease our conscience when we wish to kill that which is living, and is a distinct human individual.

Exactly Jim.
As I’ve maintained from the beginning, the only LOGICAL points in our existence where there is any real change in our nature are conception and death. In between these two events we merely have development and decay.

 

[ThomasToo]

You may be 100% convinced. Did the people lynching black slaves believe that they were killing a human? Many did not. Does that put them in the clear? They still committed murder.

How proximate does the potential killing have to be?
When an abortion is performed it is done in the same way as any direct killing. We are not discussing the possible outcomes of deadly fumes. Abortion is an act directed at one single living organism. I am not even considering the effect of mercury poisoning on the unborn for the purposes of this discussion. Your examples do not relate to the topic at hand.

Those examples were not relevant to the topic at hand. There was no secondary intent to loop it back around to the abortion question. I was–and am–curious how proximate would the potential killing would need to be before moral complacency is in play in the general case.

 

[ThomasToo]

Pregnancy is much less extreme than that.

But you called aiding the violinist ‘mere inconvenience’ which hardly seems apt.

I know that personally I would stay attached or strapped to the violinist. Granted, I’d be upset and rather bitter, but I wouldn’t let the violinist DIE.

What you would personally do was never at question; you may very well be a better man that most of us (and with a name–I hope–inspired by a great stoic philosopher I hold out hope that you are) but the question at had is staying attached to the violinist morally obligatory for everyone and I think we can agree it is not.

Like I consider the violinist argument specious?

Apparently. If, however, you find the argument specious nothing was binding you to answer without questioning/refuting the assertions of the hypothetical as I am doing with your “parallel.”

 

[Prophesy]

That said, the question also stands of what you mean by ‘permissible’? Do you mean legally allowed or do you mean the morally licit? My philosophical issues above aside I am beyond hesitant to set my moral and metaphysical philosophy as national law on this issue when there is a great deal of disagreement on it.

Should there really be such a large gap between morality based on law and morality based on ethics? I’m willing to concede that there are arbitrary laws (speed limits, etc), but there are laws that are to be based on a moral absolute (murder, rape, slavery, etc).

You’ll also not find a unanimous condemning of any action, such as murder and rape, from a populous (which I would have to say is ghastly). So a moral standard will be set, and likely opposed, and potentially overturned. But when set, it reflects the moral views of at least one person. To be afraid of promulgating your moral code seems to undermine the gravity of some of these actions.

-Prophecy

 

[ThomasToo]

Should there really be such a large gap between morality based on law and morality based on ethics? I’m willing to concede that there are arbitrary laws (speed limits, etc), but there are laws that are to be based on a moral absolute (murder, rape, slavery, etc).

There should be when there remains severe doubt about the philosophy involved. I would also argue that the second class of laws you set are not moral but pragmatic in nature; beyond the vast majority of people (n>99.9%) will readily admit that they would not want to be murdered, raped or held in slavery and so–to protect us from one another–we make those acts illegal. If, however, those who support the legal protection of abortion rights as I do are being intellectually rigorous we would admit that at such early stages of embryonic development we were not in the position to have an interest nor–as I’ve stressed here–were we the sort of beings to which rights intelligibly adhere.

 

[Prophesy]

There should be when there remains severe doubt about the philosophy involved. I would also argue that the second class of laws you set are not moral but pragmatic in nature; beyond the vast majority of people (n>99.9%) will readily admit that they would not want to be murdered, raped or held in slavery and so–to protect us from one another–we make those acts illegal.

Shouldn’t morality be pragmatic in nature? Utilitarians base morality off of pragmatism, it should seem that the two would be close if not kissing. But the second part of your reply is slightly problematic. This is because the vast majority isn’t necessarily that high, keep in mind that slavery was legal for numerous years, the laws were not based on the pragmatic belief of ‘I would prefer not to be a slave to anyone’, but instead the, also, pragmatic belief ‘it easier to have a lesser do chores for me’. We must bare in mind that personhood was withheld from slaves (not to use this as a parallel for abortion as many do because we have different definitions of personhood and a trite quote will not change that, but to explain the use of the term ‘lesser’ in the sentence).

Rape is also another thing which hasn’t always been legally condemned, as recently as last year Afghanistan (a place where the United States and other allied countries help install this government) legalized marital rape, for once again, ‘pragmatic’ reasons.

I think abortion is not the foundational point to this discussion so much as it would be whether there exists an absolute morality.

-Prophecy

 

[traillius]

Moral reasons I oppose abortion, the way it is in the US today:
It kills a human being ( a genetically unique human individual, even if not biologically complete or yet imbued with a sentient conscience )
It endangers the life and health of any woman having the procedure done, even if done in 'safe and legal ’ facilities.
Other reasons:
It degrades the value of all human life.
It destroys the future benefit that would have derived from the life that would have been.
It erodes personal responsibility of both biological parents.
Legal Reasons :
It denies the right of biological fathers of unborn humans their legal parental rights.
Feministic reasons: I am a real feminist, even though I am a man, who wants actual freedom for women. Abortion not only kills future women, it allows men(and women) to further oppress women, by not only doing this invasive procedure, and making money off of it, but also the men who rape and molest females to get away with it, by a) destroying the primary evidence of unwanted pregnancy forced on the mother, and b) absolving the father of being forced to take responsibility to help or care for the mother and child
Political reasons:
The Court in Roe v. Wade violated the constitution in more ways than I can count. Chief among them would be violations of the tenth amendment, and the first article of the constitution, which assign legislative duties and powers, respectively, to the several states, and the legislative branch ( 2 houses of congress )
Religious reasons:
I am a roman catholic
Personal reasons: I live two doors from a place where evil dwells and babies are slaughtered.
I was conceived ( I did the math ) 1 month almost to the day, before the roe v. wade decision, was handed down, erroneously, by the SCOTUS. My mom was pro-life. But Thousands of my would be contemporaries were the first to be “legally” killed in the US by abortions.

 

[traillius]

Another reason, very personal,
My wife can’t have a baby, or get pregnant, herself. We adopted a child. We would adopt more, but my wife’s permanent sicknesses, and financial difficulties, disallow that. This saddens me, that women would allow something beautiful, denied to my wife and myself, to be needlessly, and carelessly, destroyed, by a third party with an invasive procedure. Not that I don’t love my kid, either me or my wife would give our lives for his, or possibly even take a life of someone threatening his. Regardless, its actually society’s fault as much if anyone is pro-choice, especially a woman. Many have not been taught either personal or parental responsibility or the sanctity of human life in all its stages and conditions.