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

[marietta]

Posters:

Take a number!

Voco proTatiano: At what exact moment does the “foetus become an unborn child”? Is abortion a sin before that moment and a crime after that moment? This “quickening” business: There is a broad range of when the first detection of movement can be felt, ranging from 13-25 weeks. If no central nervous system develops and quickening never takes place, is abortion acceptable? I thought Catholics believed that life begins at conception. Are you not Catholic?

In my view, you need not fear “fire and brimstone” as a result of sharing this planet with me, as you are not culpable in any way for my thoughts, words or deeds.

Catholic Kat:

You may not abort your fetus when you are in labor. To the best of my knowledge, the latest anyone will perform an abortion is at 24 weeks’ gestation. No remarks or judgment necessary: moot point.

I never said “Don’t make abortion illegal”. I simply made an observation that abortions will continue whether abortion is legal or not. Abortion dates back to ancient times - if a woman decides she wants to end her pregnancy she will find a way, legal or not.

I feel you have misinterpreted my posts: I do not condone, advocate, demand, suggest or offer abortion to any woman, nor do I support anyone’s failure to feed, bathe or school his or her children. I stand back and allow a woman to decide for herself the course of action she will take. If you think you can influence her in some way to retract her decision, I don’t get in your way, either. It’s none of my affair. And if you, like Voco proTatiano, are alarmed or disgusted at the prospect of sharing this planet with someone who does not believe exactly as you do, I respect your right to feel the way you do and think of me what you will. Your feelings are not facts.

MIZER:

About those “most loving and giving people * would ever hope to meet”: Where are they? I have not found them here on this forum. I’ve found bickering, sniping, name-calling, condescension, narrow-mindedness, and hateful glee. There are enough of you piling up in my inbox to lead me to conclude that you are a representative cross-section of modern American Catholics, and that these despicable attitudes permeate every facet of your lives. If I were a pregnant woman contemplating abortion and any one of you approached me with this vitriol, I would run, run into the abortion clinic.

If you believe that you are culpable for genocide, maybe you should live the rest of your life on your knees. I do not believe I am personally responsible for the decision a young woman in Santa Rosa, California made on July 9, 2001 or the choice a woman in Eau Claire, Wisconsin made on January 31, 1988. I understand that Catholicism demands that you honor its teachings. I believe you volunteer to do so. I have no problem with any of that. I simply don’t find the argument for mass culpability for one person’s sin reasonable. Since I do not believe I am personally responsible, and I support women’s legal right to choose, I find no reason to change the system.

You need not concern yourself with my plan to “save” myself. Surely you don’t feel personally responsible for my having developed a life philosophy and style which is radically different than yours? No worries. God’s heart is bigger than yours.

I am not blind or deaf: one “marietta” will suffice.

**Mary Gail: **

You and fix can go back and see that I have not characterized abortion per se as “bad”. I have described the need for abortion, the strong market for abortion, the root of the entire problem, as being “a tragedy”. The woman who opts to have an abortion may, indeed, be making a poor choice, but I do not believe that there is only one “correct” choice. Splitting hairs, perhaps, but the poor choice speaks to many facets of the woman’s circumstances, and the “correct” choice addresses only the moral aspect of her decision.

There are certainly laws which tell you that you may not take my car or leave your kids on the side of the road. But, like it or not, there currently is no law in the United States which prohibits abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy. So GET OUT THE VOTE if you want to change it. The “death of the unborn” may not be a morally neutral thing, but my standing back and allowing another woman to decide how she will proceed, or if she will proceed, with her pregnancy, is the height of neutrality.

Sidebar: fix can speak for himself. You need not explain his intentions to me.

marietta*

 

[marietta]

Part II:

fix:

There is a legal provision for abortion because the majority voted for it.

Choosing evil is very definitely an authentic choice. It may not be the better choice, but it is an alternative, a selection which one might opt for. I agree that not every choice will be a good one.

The fact that you vehemently oppose a woman’s legal right to opt to have an abortion does not make her right to choose “a false right conjured up”. Your anger is duly recognized. My only point is that a woman should have, and does have, the right to choose.

How do I know what “bad” is if I am a relativist? I suggest you ask Catholic Kat, as she is the one who introduced this line of thinking into this thread. She’s over-qualified to give us the lowdown on how someone else is deficient.

Thanks for asking.

marietta

 

[marietta]

MIZER:

*"There are a number of anecdotally recorded and disseminated methods of performing a self-induced abortion. These may include:

physical exertion designed to bring about a miscarriage
abdominal massage
receiving punches, kicks, or other blows to the abdominal area
attempted removal of the fetus with a coat-hanger or similar device inserted into the uterus through the cervix (the historical use of this method has led to the use of coathangers as a symbol of the abortion rights movement, which associates self-induced abortion with the illegality of abortion)
attempted piercing of the fetus with a knitting needle or similar device inserted into the uterus through the cervix
suction through the insertion of a rubber tube into the uterus via the cervix
ingesting abortifacients, high quantities of vitamin C, Pennyroyal or other substances believed to induce miscarriage
douching with substances believed to induce miscarriage (beginning in the 1960s, many women used Coca Cola for this purpose, although its utility is at least dubious)" *- Wikipedia

I have a friend in Merrifield, Virginia who attempted to induce an abortion on herself with at coat hanger in 1966. She succeeded and nearly bled to death. Do not make light of this.

marietta

 

[vern_humphrey]

There is a legal provision for abortion because the majority voted for it.

Knock, knock! Roe v Wade was a Supreme Court ruling, not a referendum.

Choosing evil is very definitely an authentic choice. It may not be the better choice, but it is an alternative, a selection which one might opt for. I agree that not every choice will be a good one.

What about choosing to murder? What about choosing to rape? Should those choices be outlawed?

The fact that you vehemently oppose a woman’s legal right to opt to have an abortion does not make her right to choose “a false right conjured up”. Your anger is duly recognized. My only point is that a woman should have, and does have, the right to choose.

Except that it is a false right:

Constitution of the United States:

**Amendment V **
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

(my emphasis)

And:

Amendment XIV

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; **nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; **nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

(My emphasis)

What due process does the murdered child get?

 

[MIZER]

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.

I’ll answer to this SoCalRC. According to you it is better to dismember and extract a murdered child from the mother’s body than to be faced with the possibility that she might abandon her child after birth. Are you kidding me? An abandoned child has at least a fighting chance that he/she might be found and thus saved. Furthermore, I don’t give any credence to your study that appeared to show that abandonment was higher when abortion was leagal. I highly doubt that is true. On the other hand common sense tells us that legalized abortion reduces the value of human life so any behavior that is an expression of that devaluing (abandonment, abuse, etc…) increases, not decreases with legal abortion. Finally, mother’s can now legally abandon babies at hospitals and other social service locations without repercussion and that alone has already produced a decline in the dumpster-baby phenomenom.

Regarding infanticide. **Abortion is infanticide! ** I don’t recognize a distinction.

So SoCalRC, do you have another argument as to why we should all embrace the violent killing of the pre-born?

 

[marietta]

vern humphrey:

Roe v Wade did indeed move through the Supreme Court and was decided by a 7-2 majority.

The subject I am addressing is choice. If you consider *choice *murder, then your choice to have elective orthopedic surgery is murder.

I am not discussing the outcome of the choice. In your mind, as in most of the minds that have been hammering me all day, the choice and the outcome are one and the same. In my mind they are not. I would allow for the woman to reach a crisis point with her pregnancy, weigh her options and choose a course of action. You would allow for the woman to reach a crisis point with her pregnancy, weigh her options, and then at that point you would strip her of the right to choose a course of action. There is no free will in that. Her free will is not yours to abscond with.

marietta

 

[Chuck_H]

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.

Your statement raises some interesting questions.

While I have no qualms about considering abortion as an evil (clearing up my stand on the question) The following questions are rarely answered to my satisfaction.

1. If a pregnant woman has a spontaneous abortion for whatever physical cause and the fetus is not 20 some odd weeks old it is treated as medical waste whether in a secular or catholic hospital. I worked in cytogenetics and we regularly received tiny limbs and recognizable pieces for culture and analysis when the pregnancy terminated with suspicion of chromosomal abnormality. Why is there no religious rite or sentiment for such cases?
2. If any or all religions profess a righteous horror of elective abortion (frequently out of economic necessity) why do the groups that promise “help” require thousands of dollars up front for delivery and maternity care? And further, why are most single mothers left to their own devices with little or no economic and social help?

It would seem that if we really care then we should do everything we can to make the “choice” a positive one instead of a negative termination. A sincere and practical handling of conception products in spontaneous abortions so that reverence is evident for this failed pregnancy and a people that follow up, maternity care, guidance, and real help to an often young and desperate mother.

I have grown to suspect that if the prolife spent as much money and time in helping, counseling, and guiding as they do in marching and political action, elective abortion might diminish to negligible levels (not that this level would be acceptable but a recognition that some evil will always exist)

 

[MIZER]

The fact that you vehemently oppose a woman’s legal right to opt to have an abortion does not make her right to choose “a false right conjured up”.

Marietta,

There is no “right to choose to have one’s own child violently murdered” found in the Constitution. There is no “right to privacy” found in the Constitution. This was, in fact, conjured up by the majority of the Justices sitting on the supreme court in 1973 as a result of a case brought about by a couple of feminist lawyers representing a woman who had no desire for an abortion.

Your coat hanger scenerio is indeed gruesome, I would think that alone might give you pause. Should a women take a coat hanger to herself or a knitting needle is no support for legalized abortion on demand.

You seem to forget that it is a human baby we are talking about here. Your whole argument rests, at times, on the fact that it is, at the moment, legal. If it were not legal, then would you be against a women’s so called “right to choose” to have her baby violiently murdered or would you still say it’s up to her, whatever her choice is, should be ok?

Do you really believe there are no absolutes? Do you believe that I should have the right to choose to kill anyone other than the unborn? How far does your relativism go? If murder were legal in any case of annoyance would you defend my right to kill you? You annoy the heck out of me. Shouldn’t I have a right not to be annoyed? Shouldn’t that right extend to my right to privately do away with that annoyance by doing away with you?

 

[vern_humphrey]

vern humphrey:

Roe v Wade did indeed move through the Supreme Court and was decided by a 7-2 majority.

When 7of 9 unelected people make the decision, that’s not democracy. That’s judicial activism.

The subject I am addressing is choice. If you consider *choice *murder, then your choice to have elective orthopedic surgery is murder.

The subject you are addressing is the choice to murder a living human being.

I am not discussing the outcome of the choice.

And if I were to shoot someone, could I tell the judge, “It was my choice. And I am not discussing the outcome of the choice?”

[In your mind, as in most of the minds that have been hammering me all day, the choice and the outcome are one and the same.

Well, duh!!

If I choose to shoot someone, I will stand trial for the outcome, now won’t I?

In my mind they are not. I would allow for the woman to reach a crisis point with her pregnancy, weigh her options and choose a course of action. You would allow for the woman to reach a crisis point with her pregnancy, weigh her options, and then at that point you would strip her of the right to choose a course of action. There is no free will in that. Her free will is not yours to abscond with.

She is free not to engage in procreative activities – just as I am. Would you say if a man didn’t want to be a father, he should have the choice of having the mother forcibly aborted?
[/quote]

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

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.

Why not read up on quickening: try google: quickening legal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickening
The word “quick” originally meant “alive”. Historically, quickening has sometimes been considered to be the beginning of the possession of “individual life” by the fetus. British legal scholar William Blackstone explained the subject of quickening in the eighteenth century, relative to feticide and abortion:
“Life … begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor.”

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.

Hi Mizer,
I understand your point, and respect it.
I never said abortion pre-quickening was ok. I just said in ancient times it was not proven to be homicide.
The quickening was seen as the new shoot from the seed. A token that germination had occured, and that there was the promise that all would be well in the fullness of time.
The arguments for saying there is a child present at conception are ok for the faithful, but, though the design is finalized at that point, the zygote, then the blastocyst, and the embryo are not what will becone the child, and certainly they are not the child.
The blastocyst stage of the embryo is completely unspecialized, just a ball of virtually identical cells.
After implantation, if it occurs, and in the natural run of things, that is not guaranteed, the blastocyst, under the influence of the chemical gradient near the wall of the uterus, begins to polarise, and becomes what is recognised as the embryo, which indeed is the foetus AND the placenta.
Remember, the placenta is NOT part of the woman, it is part of the embryo.
It is a like building a ship.
the designs are finalized,
A shipyard is commissioned,
and a dry-dock is constructed.
Then the keel is laid.
The dry-dock, and the keel are like the placenta and foetus.
The frames are then fixed to the keel, and the hull is plated.
Now the vessel looks like a ship, but actually, it is just an empty shell, in the form of a ship.

You can see where the engines will go.
You can see where the fuel will be stored.
Likewise the early foetus looks like a tiny baby, and some systems seem to be functioning, but as yet, more or less independantly.
Then, suddenly, about 16 weeks into gestation, everything seems to click into place, and the whole orchestra now starts to perform in unison.
This is where I see the foetus becoming a child.
This is when a woman was said to be ‘with child’.
We now consider this to be an archaic way of saying ‘pregnant’, but actually, it says much more.
It is not just a missed period or two, it is a real promise of a new life.
At this time, a miscarriage is mourned as a death, and a procured abortion is a homicide.
Modern science has not actually improved on this.
The zygote is not new life, for it is formed from what was already living.
The spermatazoan and the oocite are every bit as alive as the zygote.
If one wished, one could in the imagination, push the time clock backwards with the oocite, and the successful spermatazoan, to their beginnings, but again, they are formed from what is living, so they, also, are not new life.
What we have is a chain of events, where what is living, changes its configuration, and reforms differently.
There is in this chain of events little difference in effect, where the chain is broken.
If we prevent the diploid cells in the gonads or ovaried from generating haploid cells, the chain is broken.
If we prevent the haploid cells from combining to form ne diploid cells, whether by mechanical intervention, drugs, or abstinence, the chain is broken.
If we prevent the zygote from dividing, the chain is broken.
If we prevent the blastocyst from implanting, the chain is broken.
Up to this point, there is little of no real destinction between contraception and abortion. I know Mother Church sees things differently from this, but that is just a different point of view.
One I respect, but not one of my articles of faith.
So, up to implantation, abortion is effectively, just another kind of contraception.
From implantation 'til quickening is a grey area.
A matter for concern: a matter of sin: but not proven as homicide.

 

[marietta]

vern humphrey:

You are uniquely, pathetically out there, dude! To me you are as extreme as I am to you.

So you are saying that we do not live in a democracy? This United States of America is not a democracy? What is it, then?

If you choose to shoot someone, you may tell the judge whatever you like. Yes, there will be consequences to your actions. I do not deny that women who procure abortions will experience consequences: some will react as if they broke a nail, others will consider it a pivotal point in their relationship with God, still others will never heal on an emotional, physical, mental and/or spiritual level. We are not all the same.

Certainly, a woman is typically free to not engage in procreative activities (except, of course, in cases of rape). If a man does not want to be a father, then he, too, should refuse to engage in procreative activities. Now, that would be his choice, would it not?

marietta

 

[SoCalRC]

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

I have answered, several hundred times. Murder, abortion, and euthanasia are always, infallibly, a “grave moral disorder” (EVANGELIUM VITAE). The persistant problem appears to be your lack of honesty and your avoidance with regards to answering questions.

This is more of your smokescreen.

Why is it that whenever I quote Rome, you respond “smokescreen”? I know that you have stated that you reject Christ’s message about the poor, and the Magisterium’s authority with regards to issues like the death penalty. But do you really reject all aspects of Catholic doctrine which do not fit your politics?

 

[marietta]

MIZER:

Thus far, I see feminism on trial, women on trial, the right to privacy on trial, free will and free thought on trial.

You could absolutely choose to “privately do away with” your annoyance by doing away with me; but since you claim there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, your consequences would not be favorable. Would that be the “correct” choice?

The “coat hanger scenerio [sic]” - that should give me pause for what, exactly? I’m extremely clear on my position here - what would be changed were I to pause for - something?

I believe that most people in this country live by some sort of absolutes. Life must be gloriously simple when everything is spelled out in black and white and all one must do is walk that line without question. I have days when I nearly envy you people, wrapped all snuggly and warm in that comfy blanket of righteousness.

Today is not one of them.

marietta

 

[marietta]

Voco proTatiano:

Your post regarding quickening was thought-provoking, centered and responsible.

Thank you.

marietta

 

[vern_humphrey]

vern humphrey:

You are uniquely, pathetically out there, dude! To me you are as extreme as I am to you.

So you are saying that we do not live in a democracy? This United States of America is not a democracy? What is it, then?

Nice dodge!!

I said Roe v Wade was not an election, and no elected representative voted on it. It was judicial activism at its worst.

If you choose to shoot someone, you may tell the judge whatever you like. Yes, there will be consequences to your actions. I do not deny that women who procure abortions will experience consequences: some will react as if they broke a nail, others will consider it a pivotal point in their relationship with God, still others will never heal on an emotional, physical, mental and/or spiritual level. We are not all the same.

How about we treat the killing of an unborn infant as we would treat the killing of that same infant a year later?

Certainly, a woman is typically free to not engage in procreative activities (except, of course, in cases of rape). If a man does not want to be a father, then he, too, should refuse to engage in procreative activities. Now, that would be his choice, would it not?

marietta

But he would not have the right to choose to kill his child, now would he?

 

[SoCalRC]

I know Mother Church sees things differently from this, but that is just a different point of view.
One I respect, but not one of my articles of faith.
So, up to implantation, abortion is effectively, just another kind of contraception.

From implantation 'til quickening is a grey area.
A matter for concern: a matter of sin: but not proven as homicide.

Believe it or not, the Church’s general point of view has long been nearly identical. It is just the moral implications on which you seemingly differ.

The Church has long held that abortion is murder only after ensoulment. It is still a grave sin, it just is not the sin of murder.

Many Catholics are under the impression that we now embrace simultaneous animation, ensoulment at conception. But that is not so. The longest standing Catholic tradition (about 1400 years) is that we are ensouled at quickening. And this actually still fits known biology very well. Quickening is felt by the mother just a few weeks before the synapses form quite suddenly in the brain. Prior to that, there is a formed body, and a collection of neurons, but no directed thought or movement.

The Church’s current stance is that ensoulment undoubtedly occurs, but we do not know exactly when and science is unlikely to provide an answer. More importantly, the Church emphasizes that the distinction does not matter. Here is the Church’s declaration on procurred abortion from 1974:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19741118_declaration-abortion_en.html

Notice footnote 19:

“This declaration expressly leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused. There is not a unanimous tradition on this point and authors are as yet in disagreement. For some it dates from the first instant; for others it could not at least precede nidation. It is not within the competence of science to decide between these views, because the existence of an immortal soul is not a question in its field. It is a philosophical problem from which our moral affirmation remains independent for two reasons: (1) supposing a belated animation, there is still nothing less than a human life, preparing for and calling for a soul in which the nature received from parents is completed, (2) on the other hand, it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable (and one can never prove the contrary) in order that the taking of life involve accepting the risk of killing a man, not only waiting for, but already in possession of his soul.”

The idea that the distinction is not terribly important is not at all new. At the time of Jesus, the Halacha, Jewish law, held that a fetus becomes ‘nefesh’, a person, at birth - essentially ‘first breath’, which is something we see reflected in writings like Genesis where breath and life are referred to together. This belief made Jews pretty unique in the ancient world in that they absolutely rejected infaticide.

But, just because the fetus was not a fully formed person prior to birth did not make it expendable. Jews were also unique in that they rejected most abortion as well. The gift of life, being a ‘nefesh’ was already considered the greatest gift, belonging to everyone, lowly female slave or first born son of a wealthy king. So potential personhood was viewed as incredibly precious as well. Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria takes other cultures to task for treating human beings and potential human beings so dismissively. Arguably, it is he that actually coined the phrase ‘culture of death’.

So the Church’s current position is really just a shift in priority, not a fundemental change. Even the absolute stance on abortions for maternal health, which really only dates from the 1880’s is a reflection of many centuries of Catholic theological thought.

Some Catholics greatly prefer a simpler formula, zygote = person so abortion = murder. But as you have shown, that argument becomes difficult in the face of modern biology. Is a uterine cyst a person?

But I think our actual teaching stands up much better. It is still a simple formula, life = gift of immeasurable value. But it takes some more nuanced thought to work through and convey.

Peace

 

[marietta]

vern humphrey:

The man who does not want to be a father may not have the right to kill his child; but with a willingness to accept whatever consequences may arise, he has the right to choose his actions.

marietta

 

[KathleenElsie]

vern humphrey:

The man who does not want to be a father may not have the right to kill his child; but with a willingness to accept whatever consequences may arise, he has the right to choose his actions.

marietta

I firmly the only CHOICE a man and a woman has is to have sexual relations or not to have sexual relations.

 

[marietta]

KathleenElsie:

“Ma’am, would you prefer the chicken or the fish?”

“I choose not to have sexual relations!”

And I firmly THAT!

marietta

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

vern humphrey:

The man who does not want to be a father may not have the right to kill his child; but with a willingness to accept whatever consequences may arise, he has the right to choose his actions.

marietta

OK, so why does the mother have the right to kill her own child? Why don’t the fathers have the right to say, “Don’t have an abortion.” It’s his baby too. I have personal knowledge of a man who begged and pleaded for the life of his baby, totally willing to be responsible and feed, clothe and shelter his child. He didn’t get his choice.