Pro-Choice folks, what are your reasons for supporting abortion?

[Mary_Gail_36]

Does God not forgive the sinner? After abortion, is there no room for redemption? Are there other sins which God refuses to forgive? If so, what are they? If this is the case, all the rhetoric about God being all-merciful is invalid. And if God is truly merciful and all-forgiving, then why aren’t you?

I know that God forgives the sinner, I know that after abortion there is plenty of room for redemption. God refuses to forgive no sins. God being all merciful is not invalid, look at a Crucifix. That is God on the Crucifix, holy, pure and innocent. And he suffered for us. When Jesus died for our sins, he didn’t say, “Go do what you like.” Abortion is wrong. Abortion is evil. I truly pray for the unborn and I pray for the women who have had abortions too, that they can become reconciled to God. I can pray for their forgiveness, but no way can I say abortion is a good thing or a neutral thing.

 

[fix]

In a 2005 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found that, based on existing studies of how babies’ brains develop in utero, pain is unlikely to be experienced before around 29 or 30 weeks. If most abortions take place before the 17th week of gestation, it’s doubtful that a fetus can put a complete sentence together in its cluster of brain cells which tells it that its mother is “murdering” it.

Is this the standard now? Murder is only murder if the victim is aware?

Your pithy remarks about killing the autistic and mentally disabled, though thoroughly unoriginal, do not pertain to my position. I have addressed the issue of the unborn, not the already-born. My statements regarding a woman’s right to decide for herself whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term have not in any way pertained to those already born. It is my understanding that we have been talking about abortion.

Does this mean the not born yet are not human? How long after birth is the baby granted the privilege of not being killed? How is this decided?

 

[Exalt]

Why I am pro-choice:

Let’s say a man is walking along and comes across a car accident. It just happened and there are no emergency vehicles on the scene. One of the cars is on fire, but leaking fuel. The man notices someone inside that car is frantically screaming for help.

The man has a choice. He can risk his life to save the person or he can’t.

If he does, I think it’s a very noble thing indeed, and he ought to receive our full-hearted support.

But if he doesn’t, we shouldn’t condemn him. It was a dangerous situation and the risk of personal injury to him was great. There should *certianly *be no law saying that he *must *help, even at risk of his own injury or death.

Similarly, pregnancy is no small matter, and it’s much more than risking your life for someone else. A government should not force a woman who becomes pregnant to stay pregnant.

If you really want to address the issues of abortion, address the issue of why women want to get abortions in the first place. It isn’t the place of government to make that call.

 

[fix]

Why I am pro-choice:

Let’s say a man is walking along and comes across a car accident. It just happened and there are no emergency vehicles on the scene. One of the cars is on fire, but leaking fuel. The man notices someone inside that car is frantically screaming for help.

The man has a choice. He can risk his life to save the person or he can’t.

If he does, I think it’s a very noble thing indeed, and he ought to receive our full-hearted support.

But if he doesn’t, we shouldn’t condemn him. It was a dangerous situation and the risk of personal injury to him was great. There should *certianly *be no law saying that he *must *help, even at risk of his own injury or death.

Similarly, pregnancy is no small matter, and it’s much more than risking your life for someone else. A government should not force a woman who becomes pregnant to stay pregnant.

If you really want to address the issues of abortion, address the issue of why women want to get abortions in the first place. It isn’t the place of government to make that call.

Is there is small difference between being unable to help a victim and actively killing the victim?

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Why I am pro-choice:

Let’s say a man is walking along and comes across a car accident. It just happened and there are no emergency vehicles on the scene. One of the cars is on fire, but leaking fuel. The man notices someone inside that car is frantically screaming for help.

The man has a choice. He can risk his life to save the person or he can’t.

If he does, I think it’s a very noble thing indeed, and he ought to receive our full-hearted support.

But if he doesn’t, we shouldn’t condemn him. It was a dangerous situation and the risk of personal injury to him was great. There should *certianly *be no law saying that he *must *help, even at risk of his own injury or death.

Similarly, pregnancy is no small matter, and it’s much more than risking your life for someone else. A government should not force a woman who becomes pregnant to stay pregnant.

If you really want to address the issues of abortion, address the issue of why women want to get abortions in the first place. It isn’t the place of government to make that call.

What happens if it’s a baby in the car, and the baby’s mother decides to not save her?

The relationship between woman and unborn baby, is not the relationship between 2 strangers. It’s the realtionship between parent and child.

I know pregnancy is no small matter…but it isn’t the same as jumping into a car on fire. I have 2 children, no burn marks at all.

 

[marietta]

fix:

I don’t know that I believe in an “objective moral truth”. Human beings are emotional and subly swayed by everything from economic insecurity to the promise of love to an empty stomach. How much of our vulnerability plays into our appreciation of an “objective moral truth”? I suppose it is a comfort to subscribe to the idea of it, as it offers structure to some people’s lives. I have some difficulty digesting the rigidity of the proposition.

This is not to accuse anyone who believes in “objective moral truth” of being foolish or naive. My position has been shaped by my life experiences and no one else’s.

If you, as a human, act badly, fix, where is your moral compass?

You cannot influence a desperate and resolute pregnant woman, even through the law, not to pursue an abortion if she has made up her mind that this is what she wants. You cannot lay that one at my feet.

“Truth with love is needed.” In light of your crack about my exhibiting signs of sociopathy, define “love”.

I don’t see people as being “incapable of acting correctly”, and neither does God. We are given opportunities every day to please Him, and sometimes we fail, utterly. Are some sins simply unforgivable? By whom?

Explain, please, what is so propagandist about my post? I think that’s a strange term to use in response to my quote.

marietta

 

[Ridgerunner]

OK, I read the entire thread.

icecubeted , Thank you!

Rather than work fruitlessly to criminalize it maybe the better good would be education, pro-life social workers, and counseling.
We can help make it easier to adopt.

I have some experience with adoption. It’s actually quite easy to adopt. What is not easy is finding a child to adopt. Because so few children are available for adoption, prospective parents are over-screened much of the time. People go to foreign countries to adopt, simply because there are so few here.

Part of the problem is abortion. There is no doubt at all about that. Part of the problem is also misguided social policies and the difficulty in terminating the rights of parents who have no business with a child when they do have one. Some of the latter is changing, and that’s good. In my state, the state finally funded lawyers to represent the Juvenile Offices in terminations they know for sure are the right thing to do. Before that, they had to rely on volunteer lawyers to do it, and that wasn’t so easy to get done.

 

[fix]

fix:

I don’t know that I believe in an “objective moral truth”. Human beings are emotional and subly swayed by everything from economic insecurity to the promise of love to an empty stomach. How much of our vulnerability plays into our appreciation of an “objective moral truth”? I suppose it is a comfort to subscribe to the idea of it, as it offers structure to some people’s lives. I have some difficulty digesting the rigidity of the proposition.

It is relativism that leads to rigidity.

What is comfortable is to do as one pleases without having to change the way one acts that is why relativism has such appeal these days.

If you are not sure objective truth exists then I would like to ask you a few questions. First, is genocide ever acceptable?

This is not to accuse anyone who believes in “objective moral truth” of being foolish or naive. My position has been shaped by my life experiences and no one else’s.

If subjective experience is the standard then right and wrong will vary. That certainly leads to many problems not only in logic, but in practice.

If you, as a human, act badly, fix, where is your moral compass?

How do you know what bad is if there is no objective truth?

You cannot influence a desperate and resolute pregnant woman, even through the law, not to pursue an abortion if she has made up her mind that this is what she wants. You cannot lay that one at my feet.

That is true of any person. Should bank robbery be legal because some desperate person wants to rob?

“Truth with love is needed.” In light of your crack about my exhibiting signs of sociopathy, define “love”.

The assertion you made is consistent with sociopathy. That is not naming you a sociopath, only the statement. Why is that unloving? Does love lie? What is the measure of love? Is killing the measure?

I don’t see people as being “incapable of acting correctly”, and neither does God. We are given opportunities every day to please Him, and sometimes we fail, utterly. Are some sins simply unforgivable? By whom?

But, you set up a straw man here. Who argues one who repents will not be forgiven?

Explain, please, what is so propagandist about my post? I think that’s a strange term to use in response to my quote.

marietta

The assertion more lives will be lost if the law protects innocents.

 

[fix]

Marietta,

Let me see if I understand your position correctly.

1. Abortion is “bad”.
2. You believe there exists an authetic choice to kill innocents, at least under certain circumstances.
3. We have no right to influence others not to kill innocents.
4. If an unborn baby cannot feel pain it is morally licit to kill them.
5. Proscribing abortion in civil law is bad because the state has no authority to stop another from killing innocents and because there will be an increase in maternal death.
6. Moral truth is relative.

Am I wrong on any of that or have I left anything out that should be added?

 

[marietta]

fix:

Abortion is currently a legal and available procedure chosen by some women. “Bad”? I think it’s a tragedy that there is such a strong market for abortion. I don’t feel qualified to make a judgment on anyone who chooses to have an abortion. So I don’t know how to apply the term “bad”: are the women “bad”? Is the availability of the option “bad”? What do you mean?

There is an authentic choice to opt for abortion, as evidenced by the many thousands of women who undergo this procedure every day in this country.

You have the right to do whatever your conscience and your faith direct you to do. And so do I.

The morality of the act of abortion lives within the soul of the person undergoing the abortion. Your moral compass and mine obviously point in different directions. You choose a behavior, you suffer the consequences. I choose a behavior, I suffer the consequences.

Let’s see: vacuum aspirator, coat hanger. Yes, there will be an increase in maternal deaths if abortion becomes illegal again.

“Moral truth is relative”. I read the Wikipedia piece on relativism and found there are many different branches of thought on this “belief system”. Some of the ideas are very familiar to me, others I cannot say I thoroughly embrace. I do believe God created a diverse world and that our responsibility is to question, to learn and to grow. He created me, too,** fix**; He gave me a brain and heart and soul and I am using them the best way I know how, maintaining my right to be true to myself, in my own spiritual journey. Is that somehow threatening?

Are you wrong? Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you be having that conversation with God?

marietta

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

fix:

All right, if we’re going to play the semantics game, let me rephrase:

" . . . And your absolute disgust, horror and repugnance upon learning of any woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy carries no more weight than Catholic Kat’s or rlg94086’s or neat62’s or Mary Gail 36’s . . ." Nor does it trump my thoughts or feelings about her choice.

Marinate in this for a few minutes: I don’t like abortion. I find it appalling that in one clinic I know of in Texas, 30-40 procedures are carried out every single day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year. What does that say about the ignorance of the boys and girls and men and women who cannot seem to successfully manage their reproductive lives? It is a travesty. Abortion is sterile, it’s legal, and it’s sad. I pray for the mothers, the fathers, the families (although I’m sure many of you are not resisting the temptation here to wonder just who it is I’m praying to, but that’s irrelevant). I pray for the babies, perfect, imperfect, without brains, with spina bifida, with blue eyes, with black hair, with all ten toes and all ten fingers, or with absolutely crushed facial figures and limbs due to insufficient amniotic fluid through the fault of no one.

Tremendous sadness, a pain in my gut, the knowledge that these people will likely suffer as a result of their actions - *none of these *things gives me permission or the authority to try to influence the woman as she decides what she will do. I believe in the freedom to choose. Every single one of you has chosen your paths. It isn’t free will if she is being taunted and shamed and ridiculed and made to feel guilty. Believe me, there’s plenty of that in the minds of most women seeking abortions without you yammering on and on and on about murder.

So feel the way you feel. Think the way you think. I will do the same. And if Roe is overturned it will not change the abortion statistics. Women may have to return to self-induced abortions. And so the death stats definitely will increase.

Maybe you think that’s justice.

marietta

Dear Marietta,
I can see where you are coming from, but there is a point where the potential mother loses her freedom of choice.
That is clearly when the foetus becomes an unborn child.
Traditionally, that as at the time of the quickening.
Regardless of what your judges and politicians choose to spout, that is when a sin becomes a crime.
Destruction of a child is homicide.
There is medical argument as to when the quickening is, but 16 - 20 weeks seems to be the region.
Now, if the foetus is ancephalic, then obviousl this is nonaplicable, for without a functioning CNS, there can never be a quickening.
I you are proposing involuntary euthanasia upon an unborn child, why not upon a born child, after the defects have been properly evaluated, not just guessed at?
No, this is a slimey slippery slope, and if it is representative of American women, then I am most uncomfortable sharing this planet with you, for I fear the fire and brimstone, which I may incur as collateral damage in your judgement.

 

[Catholic_Kat]

fix:

You cannot influence a desperate and resolute pregnant woman, even through the law, not to pursue an abortion if she has made up her mind that this is what she wants. You cannot lay that one at my feet.

marietta

This thinking still baffles me. So, am I allowed to do whatever I want so long as I have made up my mind? I can murder my unborn child while in labor in the last week of pregnancy and no one can say a thing?

This is another statement of modern relativism. Now the relativist is saying even if abortion was illegal, that won’t stop people from having one, so don’t make it illegal. Funny, murders still go on and that’s been illegal since the beginning of time, yet we’ve never done away with that law. Just because something is popular does not make it right.

I also want to add that having a baby is personal, but he second you create a life, you are responsible for it. You must nurture that life, or it is murder/abuse. You continue to say it’s up to the mother, but so is raising a child. Should no one step in and reprimand the mother if she chooses to not feed her children, not bathe them, not school them? Why does it change when the life is outside the womb? In both cases, the life is that of an innocent child.

 

[MIZER]

You cannot influence a desperate and resolute pregnant woman, even through the law, not to pursue an abortion if she has made up her mind that this is what she wants. You cannot lay that one at my feet.

Marietta, Marietta,

You are so wrong about so many, many things. This one is screaming at me. We most certainly can influence a desperate and resolute pregnant woman. It is done every single day in this country alone, thanks to a good and merciful God and a contingency of the most loving and giving people you could ever hope to meet.

This influence would be much easier to achieve if the law were on our side. So in that sense this influence could be achieved “through the law”.

As it is, because our Supreme Court went outside it’s jurisdiction and created law (something the legislators alone, are supposed to do) based on their (the 1973 Supreme Court Justices) mis-guided attempt to interpret our Constitution, reading into it a right that does not exist (privacy), the law is no help to us in influencing desperate pregnant women. But it could be… And by God’s Grace, if we as a nation can somehow regain a position of being in God’s Grace, someday, it will be.

Marietta, we are not talking about the dicision of an individual woman to choose for herself what color to paint her toenails. That choice we cannott rightly lay at your feet. The choice we are talking about here is the choice made more than a million times a year to have a human being, legally, yet mercilessly and without due process, violently and systematically, murdered. This is the very difinition of genocide. Look it up!

Because we live in a free country where we the people make our own laws, this situation does lie at the feet of us all, you included. Sorry, but you are culpable for every single life that is snuffed out in this manner, on the altar of convenience and expediency, just like the rest of us. If you don’t like that fact of reality, my question to you is, what are you doing to change it?

You are standing in an ever rising pool of innocent blood. It is not only at your feet, it is rising and it is about to choke the very breath you plan to take next. What are you going to do to stop it’s rise and save yourself? Saving yourself seems to be your only moral bar, as it is the solitary value system, in the religion of relativism. YIKES!!!

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

fix:

Abortion is currently a legal and available procedure chosen by some women. “Bad”? I think it’s a tragedy that there is such a strong market for abortion. I don’t feel qualified to make a judgment on anyone who chooses to have an abortion. So I don’t know how to apply the term “bad”: are the women “bad”? Is the availability of the option “bad”? What do you mean? It is bad to kill a small helpless unborn human being. The easily availability of this “choice” is bad. The fact that babies live or die based on subjective criteria is bad

There is an authentic choice to opt for abortion, as evidenced by the many thousands of women who undergo this procedure every day in this country. Because the "choice is available does not make it a correct choice. A women enters an abortion clinic pregnant, and leaves not being pregnant. That means that those babies don’t get to be born. They have been sentenced to death, without having done anything.

You have the right to do whatever your conscience and your faith direct you to do. And so do I. What if my moral conscience tells me I can come and take your car? Isn’t that my “choice”. What if my moral conscience says I don’t like my kids, can I leave them on the side of the road? If I did those things, aren’t there laws to tell me I was wrong?

The morality of the act of abortion lives within the soul of the person undergoing the abortion. Your moral compass and mine obviously point in different directions. You choose a behavior, you suffer the consequences. I choose a behavior, I suffer the consequences. So sometimes abortion is fine depending on the person having it? Isn’t the end result a baby that is not allowed to be born. My moral compass can’t understand how the death of an innocent solves any problems.

Let’s see: vacuum aspirator, coat hanger. Yes, there will be an increase in maternal deaths if abortion becomes illegal again. So, In 1971 1.500 million women had abortions? I don’t want anyone to die. But the direct abortion is not necessary. LIFE is the better choice.

“Moral truth is relative”. I read the Wikipedia piece on relativism and found there are many different branches of thought on this “belief system”. Some of the ideas are very familiar to me, others I cannot say I thoroughly embrace. I do believe God created a diverse world and that our responsibility is to question, to learn and to grow. He created me, too,** fix**; He gave me a brain and heart and soul and I am using them the best way I know how, maintaining my right to be true to myself, in my own spiritual journey. Is that somehow threatening?
God made me too. And he did not make me in a vacuum. We were given the ten commandments, Jesus came to save us. I can’t see the death of the unborn as being a morally neutral thing.

Are you wrong? Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you be having that conversation with God?
I believe that fix meant if he was wrong about what you felt.

marietta

 

[fix]

fix:

Abortion is currently a legal and available procedure chosen by some women. “Bad”? I think it’s a tragedy that there is such a strong market for abortion. I don’t feel qualified to make a judgment on anyone who chooses to have an abortion. So I don’t know how to apply the term “bad”: are the women “bad”? Is the availability of the option “bad”? What do you mean?

From what you have said you think abortion is bad. You call it a tragedy. If it is bad then why is there a legal choice to cause a tragedy?

There is an authentic choice to opt for abortion, as evidenced by the many thousands of women who undergo this procedure every day in this country.

Choosing evil is no authentic choice. When we choose evil we are misusing freedom. That we have the power to kill does not mean the choice is a good.

You have the right to do whatever your conscience and your faith direct you to do. And so do I.

The “right”?? No there is no so-called right to do evil. The state allows it, but that is a false right conjured up.

The morality of the act of abortion lives within the soul of the person undergoing the abortion. Your moral compass and mine obviously point in different directions. You choose a behavior, you suffer the consequences. I choose a behavior, I suffer the consequences.

Choose abortion and an innocent child suffers the consequences. What right is there to kill innocents intentionally?

Let’s see: vacuum aspirator, coat hanger. Yes, there will be an increase in maternal deaths if abortion becomes illegal again.

Proof?

“Moral truth is relative”. I read the Wikipedia piece on relativism and found there are many different branches of thought on this “belief system”. Some of the ideas are very familiar to me, others I cannot say I thoroughly embrace. I do believe God created a diverse world and that our responsibility is to question, to learn and to grow. He created me, too,** fix**; He gave me a brain and heart and soul and I am using them the best way I know how, maintaining my right to be true to myself, in my own spiritual journey. Is that somehow threatening?

If there is no objective truth then anything goes. That would mean things like Nazi Germany were morally acceptable because they were being true to themselves.

Are you wrong? Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you be having that conversation with God?

marietta

I am asking how you know what bad is if you are a relativist?

 

[vern_humphrey]

There was a case a few years back of a girl who gave birth in the lady’s room at her high school prom. She threw the baby in the trash.

1. Did she do wrong?
2. Had she plunged her nail scissors into the baby’s head as it crowned, and then given birth to a corpse, would it still be wrong?
3. If the answers to 1 and 2 are “yes,” how can it be right to kill a baby five minutes before the head crowns? Or five days, five weeks, or five months?

 

[MIZER]

Let’s see: vacuum aspirator, coat hanger. Yes, there will be an increase in maternal deaths if abortion becomes illegal again.

You should be aware Marietta that the coathanger was used as propaganda by the pro-aborts in the early years to sway public opinion. There is no evidence that any woman or abortionist ever used a coathanger to effect an abortion.

Maternal deaths were not due to the method employed by the abortionist or the by the mother if she was self aborting. Maternal deaths were due to a lack of antibiotics.

Maternal death never had, nor does it have today, anything to do with the legality of the act. Having a woman walk through the front door, instead of through the back door protects niether her life nor her health. Both doors result in a dead child. Both doors result in an abused woman.

Women die today due to complications of abortion all the time. You just don’t read about it. There is no doubt that more women die today than during the years pre-Roe simply because the numbers of women choosing death for their child has exploded. If you count the babies who would have grown into women then obviously your statistic can’t even be considered as it is but a drop in a very bloody bucket.

Today, while we are told the pro-abort community wants abortion to be safe and rare, we get niether. There is always an emotional price to pay for the women, that is a detriment to her health. Physically, the uterous can be perforated, uncontrollable infection can set in. MRSA, is of course a concern and it can be deadly, the list of potentially life threatening complications is a long and scary one.

Abortion mills are very poorly regulated, un-like ear-piercing, hair braiding salons or tatoo parlors. It really is disgusting. One must have all kinds of parental consent for the affor-mentioned activities to take place on a minor while very few states have enacted parental consent laws for abortions.

We don’t even have accurate records of how many woman die as a result of abortion because the act, although legal, is still admittedly heinous and is shrowded in secrecy. Many women don’t recieve the medical help they need when something goes wrong with an abortion because the abortion provider does not wish to have an ambulance come screaming up to thier back door. It’s a very sad, very dangerous situation for the women who choose this route. Don’t kid yourself. Abortion is rarely, if ever, “safe” for the mother and it is always deadly for the child.

 

[MIZER]

Originially posted by Vern Humphrey: There was a case a few years back of a girl who gave birth in the lady’s room at her high school prom. She threw the baby in the trash.

1. Did she do wrong?

1. Had she plunged her nail scissors into the baby’s head as it crowned, and then given birth to a corpse, would it still be wrong?

1. If the answers to 1 and 2 are “yes,” how can it be right to kill a baby five minutes before the head crowns? Or five days, five weeks, or five months?

I would like to take this all the way back to conception and ask Voco pro Tatiano why it would be ok to abort at any time after conception? Human life begins at conception. Quickening is not traditionally the point at which we know a human life is present. It’s present at conception, the point at which a moment before you did not exist and the point at which a moment after, you did.

 

[SoCalRC]

There was a case a few years back of a girl who gave birth in the lady’s room at her high school prom. She threw the baby in the trash.

1. Did she do wrong?
2. Had she plunged her nail scissors into the baby’s head as it crowned, and then given birth to a corpse, would it still be wrong?
3. If the answers to 1 and 2 are “yes,” how can it be right to kill a baby five minutes before the head crowns? Or five days, five weeks, or five months?

Did the fact that infanticide and child abandonment/endangerment are both illegal stop her?

That’s what secular pro aboriton folks will ask. And they would not be without evidence. The WHO study definately appeared to show that infanticide and abandonment both go up when abortion is illegal.

It is a question that all Catholics interested in promoting pro-life should be prepared to answer. The numercal answer, that a smaller number of infants and young mothers dying in bathrooms is better than a million babies is not very convincing to secular society. Presumably because even they can sense that it is culture of death thinking (it is a lot easier to see teenagers and infants as fellow human beings than fertilized zygotes).

The Church has some better answers, but they are not easy:

“In this context “limiting the harm”], it must be noted also that a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good. Nor can a Catholic think of delegating his Christian responsibility to others; rather, the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives him this task, so that the truth about man and the world might be proclaimed and put into action.”

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html

But I don’t know that anyone has ever claimed that following Christ was meant to be easy.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Did the fact that infanticide and child abandonment/endangerment are both illegal stop her?

You can’t say yes or no to that, can you?

This is more of your smokescreen.