Pro Choice Politics

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QwertyGirl said:
Not really. Most just don’t believe that life begins at the same time pro-life people do. It really is that simple.
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Then they are deliberately blind to scientific reality. Life does begin at conception, an embryo is most definitely alive, human and with a seperate genetic identity to its mother. To deny that an embryo is a human life is to deny reality.
 
Monica83 said:
Luckily, science tells us when life begins, so arbitrary beliefs don’t matter.
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The term “life” used by scientists in their description of the fertilization process is not exactly the same as the use of the same word in the field of Philosophy and Morals. We cannot rely on science to answer this question. We must rely on faith.
 
Ignatius64869 said:
I feel as though many on this forum conflate voting democratic with voting pro choice.
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That’s the problem of the conflators. It’s not my problem.

Our votes in USA are secret anyway, so nobody is supposed to know how we actually vote unless we announce it. Nobody is going to get publicly punished by the Church based on a vote. The politicians who lobby openly for particular laws, usually for their own career gains, are a different story.
 
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I call bovine manure. This is a question of embryology, PERIOD. No room for wiggle.
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(I also read your quotations from embryology textbooks, and I agree with all of them.)

The moral question, however, relating to abortion is not the same question that the embryologist were answering. The moral question is what degree of respect do we owe to a living entity. That cannot be answered from science alone, which does not address the moral question.

Consider people at the end of life. When they enter a state where the heart stops and brain waves cease, we say they are dead. Their body is still respected, but it is not protected in the same way that we would protect a healthy adult. It is buried in the ground. But at the moment of death, many cells in the body are continuing to function. Some metabolism is taking place in the muscles. It takes many minutes, maybe even hours, before every part of the body can be said to be dead. But we do not wait for that to happen before we treat the body as a dead body. In many cases, viable organs are harvested after “official” death and donated to those in need of a transplant. The characteristic that defines when this happens is the assessment of whether that person (or that body) is likely to recover to the point of being able to live normally with only “reasonable” help from others. Brain waves, a heart beat, breathing - when all of these things are absent, the person is declared dead.

…continued…
 
…continuing:…

Looking at an embryo, we see that initially it has not heartbeat, no brain waves, and no breathing. By using the same criteria we use at the end of life, this embryo is not yet alive. However we still give that embryo the same respect and care we would give any live person because we know the potential this embryo has. We know that in the normal course of events, an embryo will develop a brain, a heart, and lungs. The heart will start beating, the brain will start thinking, and the lungs will eventually breath air. It is knowledge of this potential that moves us to treat the embryo as living and worthy of the same protection any living human gets.

But if the potential for this embryo is the key factor in this treatment of the embryo, we would have to acknowledge that a similar potential exists in the moment just before conception, when the sperm is on the verge of entering the egg. The identification of one sperm and one egg and their proximity to each other is enough to realize that there is potential for them to develop into a breathing human.

Another way to look at it is that the egg all by itself has some potential. If we did not know about the role of the sperm in defining genetic characteristics, we might say that the sperm looks like a kind of food to enable the egg to develop. This is similar to how at one time people used to think that the sperm was the essential “seed” that turned in to a human, and the womb was just like some fertile ground into which the seed is planted. Of course we now know that both the sperm and the egg play a role in determining genetic characteristics. However the genetic blueprint is not completely cast in stone at the moment of conception. There are chemical processes that can occur after conception that can affect the characteristics of the offspring. So the joining of the sperm and egg is not the only source of these characteristics. This puts the importance of the moment of conception in a slightly different light. That’s what I mean about this moral question be grounded in faith.
 
They are! They eat and drink damnation unto themselves. 1 Corinthians 11:27-32.

You want man’s justice, the Church’s best human attempt at justice, or God’s perfect and eternal justice?
 
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Wic said:
Why are Pro Choice Catholics not disciplined for pushing the Pro Choice agenda and allocating money to fund abortions?
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They are incurring great punishment. If they don’t repent, it will be eternal.
mrsdizzyd said:
The church leadership is reluctant to draw a line in the sand.
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Abortion is a mortal sin, so the line is already drawn in the sand. Encouraging or supporting mortal sins for others causes one to excommunicate themselves. The Church does not have to take any official actions because the consequence has already occurred.
 
Fair enough.

First, why should pro-choice Catholics be punished? A politician could be against abortion and also against making it illegal. They could simply believe a legislative approach would be ineffective and disproportionately harmful to poor women. They could believe that it is inappropriate to force their theological conclusions onto all people.

Unless they specifically say that abortion is moral or that life does not begin at conception, then their approach to a moral issue is not a doctrinal matter. It’s a legislative one.

Second, how do you propose they be punished? The Eucharist is not a reward for the righteous. None of us are worthy. It’s the body of Christ. It is food for one’s spiritual journey. It’s not ours to withhold. Placing judgement on a person and withholding the sacramental grace from the Eucharist is truly not our place, especially if they have not said anything heretical. Illogical? Perhaps. Heretical, not necessarily.
 
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Ignatius64869 said:
They could believe that it is inappropriate to force their theological conclusions onto all people.
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Then they’re picking and choosing which ones they apply.

There’s no argument over enforcing the theological conclusions that rape and murder are wrong, is there?
 
I agree that it’s illogical (I do not agree with that position), but being illogical or inconsistent does not make one a heretic.
 
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Wic said:
Why are Pro Choice Catholics not disciplined for pushing the Pro Choice agenda and allocating money to fund abortions?

🧐
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I can’t speak for the Bishops in other nations, but in the United States it has to do with America’s anti-Catholic past. Catholics used to have to swear publicly no allegiance to the Pope before being allowed to run for office.

Many protestant Americans feared that if too many Catholics were in Congress, that the Bishops would wind up running the Country because Catholic politicians would do whatever the Pope and their bishop told them to do.

So the American bishops are very sensitive (perhaps hypersensitive) to this.

God Bless
 
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Yeah, but in a way that’s worse… selective logical inconsistency is irritating haha
 
Haha, it can be frustrating from an argumentative perspective. However, I think we need to be careful not to judge those genuinely trying to do God’s will. Are most politicians trying to do God’s will? Probably not, but even then who are we to judge their worthiness to receive the body of Christ?
 
I think that they should be disciplined, or strongly criticized for hypocrisy, at least!
 
Why? How will disciplining them bring more people to Christ? Through fear of receiving the same punishment? That inspires conformity through social pressure. That doesn’t facilitate faithfulness.
 
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well stated, but I equate a great candidate who happens to be pro abortion to a great plate of food. So many tasty things, but the few poison mushrooms, mixed in makes the whole plate inedible.
 
I’m not the one proposing that people be “punished”. I’m not a member of the Magisterium or a bishop, I don’t decide what punishment is appropriate. All I’m saying is that punishment, if any, has to be applied fairly, which means you don’t let Joe Biden skate while you’re beating up on some low-level INS employee who is trying to hold a job and is carrying out legitimately made US law. It seems like usually the church just chooses to let them both skate, and that’s fine with me. I’m not a member of the torches and pitchforks brigade.

And what you are saying about politicians having various reasons to vote the way they do is another reason why it’s difficult for the church to do this.

I don’t really agree with your last paragraph though. The Church throughout the centuries has withheld sacraments from all kinds of people and continues to do so. Whether their decisions were right or not in the case of a certain person, for example St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, has sometimes been questioned later, but if we went with your reasoning “it’s not ours to withhold” then everybody, including non-believers and Protestants, would be able to receive.
 
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