Question on Prudence and Abortion

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davidv said:
I have nothing to add.
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So what exactly did you say? Because I don’t think you fully answered my questions (I’m not trying to be difficult, I just need my conscience to be clearer on this subject).
 
fakename said:
So what exactly did you say? Because I don’t think you fully answered my questions (I’m not trying to be difficult, I just need my conscience to be clearer on this subject).
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I think your suggestion that we back away from protesting and teaching against abortion is ill-advised and is contrary to our call by Jesus to evangelize. Those who will be upset with this are not likely to be on a path to repentance.
 
bilop said:
Of course it is.

Are you seriously arguing that if it were possible to pass a law banning 99% of all abortions (except rape and incest), pro-lifers shouldn’t vote for it because it’s not perfect?

That’s crazy talk. If you can save 990K of the 1M babies aborted every year, it is 100% moral to do so, and then work on the other 1% later.

It would be immoral to oppose such a law, since it outlaws many murders. Every incremental step towards fewer abortions is a win.

God Bless
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Id say it is still immoral because how cam you prove a person was raped? All the regular non-raped women who get abortions would just start rampantly claiming to have been raped by their BFs or whatever to bypass the law. Problem would not be solved.
 
davidv said:
I think your suggestion that we back away from protesting and teaching against abortion is ill-advised and is contrary to our call by Jesus to evangelize. Those who will be upset with this are not likely to be on a path to repentance.
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I did not make that suggestion or any suggestion.

I’m still wondering if you ever said that I was correct, that if the antecedent of my hypothetical in the OP was true, then the consequent would be true?
 
fakename said:
Well even the pastoral document for voter’s conscience, which outlines the “non-negotiables”, accepts that if abortion cannot be prohibited in all cases, then at least in some cases it can be permitted (for instance here politicalresponsibility.com/voterguide.htm). But I’m asking if there are even more scenarios where this is true, testing the principle to see if I interpreted correctly.
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Catholic teaching on ethics is a rich and beautiful study. I would encourage independantly studying it, or perhaps taking a course on it, but in brief, here it is.

Step 1: If an action is objectively evil, you may not do it.

Step 2: If the intention involved in an action is evil, you may not do the action.

Step 3: If the circumstances of the action are evil, you may not do it.

Step 4: If the action, intent and circumstances are good, but something evil also takes place as a result of my good action, can I still do the action? This is what’s called “The Principle of Double-Effect,” and the answer is; yes, under certain conditions. Those conditions are; the good must not come about as a direct result of the evil (because this would merely be rationalizing evildoing for the purpose of some good outcome,) the forseeable good that comes from the action must be greater than the evil, (because otherwise, evil advances more than good,) and finally, the good consequences must be at least as directly-connected to your action as the evil consequences.

Step 5: If I’m up against a wall, and I have to choose between two evil actions, and I choose one of them, have I done evil? Well, that depends. If you chose the evil that did the least harm, and if there was -absolutely- no way of avoiding -both- evil actions, then you did the right thing. Obviously, the first obligation is to avoid doing any evil actions, but if one evil action must be done in order to keep from doing a worse one, you may.

Remember, though, this isn’t some loophole to justify evil. Evil is still wrong, and the objective of this rule is, when you get down to it, to do as little evil as possible in your particular circumstances.

Step 6: if I help someone, knowing that he has an evil intention, and he does evil deeds because I helped him, am I to blame for his evil? If you helped him, with the intention of him doing or spreading evil, then yes. You are to blame. That’s called formal cooperation with evil. If you didn’t share his evil intent, but his actions would have been impossible without your help, then you are still guilty, because you knew what he was planning, and you went along with it for some other reason. That’s still evil. On the other hand, if you help him under duress; like someone’s got a gun to your head, then you did evil, but don’t have nearly as much guilt because of it.
Now, in the catechism, they list a very interesting sin; scandal. Here’s what’s said about it.

“Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.”
CCC 2284

Now, if we stop denouncing, even for a moment, a grave evil, does that not seem to you to fall under this definition of the sin of scandal?
 
Bradski said:
There is a direct correlation between sex education and teenage pregnancies. Not just in Texas and not just in the US but worldwide. The more sex education that is available to teenagers, the less pregnancies.
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There is also a direct correlation between the availability of contraception and abortion and teenage pregnancies… and illegitimate births, if you look at it from an historical rather than geographical pooint of view.

BTW, the statistic you cited about almost half of women having abortions had not used abc? AGI reports that 54% of women having abortions had used abc that month, 38% had not used abc that month but had in the past, and only 8% had never used abc at all.

So it’s not *really *a question of lack of birth control education, since 92% of women who had an abortion had used abc, and only 8% had never used it.
 
fakename said:
I did not make that suggestion or any suggestion.
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How else was I to take this from the OP?
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fakename:
For instance, to publicly argue against abortion could make people even more obstinate in their pro-choice convictions. So the only way to get rid of abortion might be to emphasize doing other things so that eventually, abortion could be made illegal. Is this valid moral reasoning?
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I’m still wondering if you ever said that I was correct, that if the antecedent of my hypothetical in the OP was true, then the consequent would be true?
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I re-read the OP several times, and it get more confusing each time I read it. So I no longer think, as I stated in post#2, that you presented a logically valid argument. Short answer, your consequent does not depend on the antecedent and it is true or false independent of the the truth of the antecedent.
 
surritter said:

I stand by what I wrote before, and yes, I’ll give the Church document which states the idea.
The Church indeed permits voting for such a law (within certain circumstances/conditions).
The following is from “Evangelium Vitae,” given to us by Blessed John Paul II, paragraph 73 (my emphasis added):​

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on…In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.​

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To turn the tide of abortion in increments.I read a statement by one of the Archbishops’ regarding the personhood amendment. This particular Archbishop(can’t remember which one) stated that it was more prudent to work for small changes initially,rather than pushing for something like this particular amendement all at one time. This makes sense to me.
 
davidv said:
How else was I to take this from the OP?

I re-read the OP several times, and it get more confusing each time I read it. So I no longer think, as I stated in post#2, that you presented a logically valid argument. Short answer, your consequent does not depend on the antecedent and it is true or false independent of the the truth of the antecedent.
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(1) It was clear that I was making no suggestions in the OP from the fact that I used so many “ifs” and “coulds” in it. The words “if” and “could” denote hypothetical conditional statements and a suggestion is never a hypothetical -one does not suggest something by saying “hypothetically I would suggest taking medication”. Secondly the OP was a pure question, and a question is never a suggestion, again it would be absurd to say “Could abortion laws be incremental given some conditions?” is equivalent to “I suggest that abortion laws should be incremental”.

(2) As I said before I’m not even looking for logical validity but only moral validity. I only posted that stuff about “antecedents” because I thought you were implying or going to imply that the OP was both a logical and demonstrative proposition of morality.

But now I see I will have to fully explain myself: I only meant to ask that “If certain conditions (like the obstinacy one) are there, then is that sufficient to not fight for immediate and total abolition of abortion?” That’s not an argument (and I’m not totally sure I even made one but I just left you to your interpretation since it had no effect on my question until now) but only a singular statement so I’m just asking if it is a true statement. Is it?
 
Hi….! The answer to the first question is the answer to the general question of whether assassinate should be made unlawful now. And it should be made against the law, and the holds true of abortion.
 
fakename said:
(1) It was clear that I was making no suggestions in the OP from the fact that I used so many “ifs” and “coulds” in it. The words “if” and “could” denote hypothetical conditional statements and a suggestion is never a hypothetical -one does not suggest something by saying “hypothetically I would suggest taking medication”. Secondly the OP was a pure question, and a question is never a suggestion, again it would be absurd to say “Could abortion laws be incremental given some conditions?” is equivalent to “I suggest that abortion laws should be incremental”.

(2) As I said before I’m not even looking for logical validity but only moral validity. I only posted that stuff about “antecedents” because I thought you were implying or going to imply that the OP was both a logical and demonstrative proposition of morality.

But now I see I will have to fully explain myself: I only meant to ask that “If certain conditions (like the obstinacy one) are there, then is that sufficient to not fight for immediate and total abolition of abortion?” That’s not an argument (and I’m not totally sure I even made one but I just left you to your interpretation since it had no effect on my question until now) but only a singular statement so I’m just asking if it is a true statement. Is it?
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Not necessarily, the qualifiers are too generic.
 
fakename said:
How about preaching against abortion as a cause of obstinate refusal to accept anti-abortion as a less vague antecedent?
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To think about it, I don’t think I ever got an unambiguous answer to this question.
So what is it do you think?
 
I take issue with the way that abortion is fought. A federal ban on abortion is short sighted and a band aid fix.

My problem is that people are incorrectly making this into a political issue, when it is really a crime issue. A federal ban on abortion is short sighted because A.) it can merely be overturned, and more importantly, B.) the states have the power to enforce criminal law, not the Federal government. Giving the federal government the power to prohibit abortion means that the issue changes from murder (a criminal case prosecuted under state law) to merely a political procedure.

We would be better served by fighting to get life to be defined as beginning at conception and letting current laws against murder take care of the rest. Once life is defined as beginning at conception, and a fetus at any stage of development has all the same rights and protections as a human being of any other age, then “abortion” merely becomes another term for “murder”, much in the same way that “infanticide” is still murder, but has more precise meaning.
 
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