The pro-life common sense clincher

[Spirithound]

No, it does not. How this poster votes is none of your business.

I’m not asking how you vote. I am pointing out that voters are ultimately responsible for Supreme Court nominees, and therefore an individual citizen’s policies are important. Now, I repeat, should the government limit itself from arresting terrorists?

There is no right or wrong legal position----reasonable people can disagree the nature and the extent of the use of govt power to address social problems.

Of course there are right and wrong legal positions. Exterminating Jews was a wrong legal position. Why isn’t exterminating babies?

Come on, Spirithound We thought you were not concerned with " silly" comebacks. " Pro-life" as it is being used in this thread is about using the govt police power to address the abortion problem—that is a legal position----“legal pro-life” Not to be mistaken with those who personally oppose abortion morally and are thus for life but do not support the use of govt police power in every case to address the problem.

Frankly I can’t even remember how we got into the legal aspect…wait…it was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who introduced the concept of limited government power, and is now refusing to define it, right?

This poster needs not to reconsider anything more fully. This poster’s position is explaining a legal position in regards to the abortion problem—a legal position that is reasonable to hold given the nature of govt’s relationship to the individual in a democratic-republic based on limited govt. God Bless

So you’re digging your heels in. You have nothing to learn.

Fallacious appeal to the majority—do you not believe in popular democracy.

Is the majority always correct?

Now wait, the majority will did not matter above----so why does the SCOTUS need to worry about that.

Ahhh, ok you got me there. Now please excuse me, I’m going to nail some Jell-O to the wall. God bless

 

[CatofAlexandria]

What are people’s views of that bit of the Bible that says that someone should be punished more for the killing of a woman with child than if just the child miscarries? I cannot remember the chap/verse, I’m sure you guys know it better than me… It is the one that continues to ‘an eye for an eye’ which sort of implies the woman is more fully human/of more worth than her unborn child, or do you just interpret it as both woman and child are dead, so it is worse?!

The second interpretation is more reasonable. This theory is common practice in several U.S. jurisdictions, actually. Causing the death of a fetus without the mother’s consent is a crime under most state penal codes (and, I think, the Model Penal Code, as well, even though the MPC defines a “person” as “born”). It carries a small but substantial punishment (usually combined with some charge for assaulting or killing the pregnant mother). Since they are two separate crimes, the punishments aggregate.

 

[Worthy5]

Spirithound;6327258] Now, I repeat, should the government limit itself from arresting terrorists?

Perhaps that is another thread.

Of course there are right and wrong legal positions. Exterminating Jews was a wrong legal position. Why isn’t exterminating babies?

There you go again.

Frankly I can’t even remember how we got into the legal aspect…wait…it was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who introduced the concept of limited government power, and is now refusing to define it, right?

Well, is not your and the OP’s pro-life position about using the govt police power to criminalize all abortions-----if so the OP introduced the legal aspect.

So you’re digging your heels in. You have nothing to learn.

No, because this poster understands the counteragrument to the " pro-choice" position as well.

Is the majority always correct?

No, that is why the Court is needed to protect the rights and power of individuals.

Ahhh, ok you got me there. Now please excuse me, I’m going to nail some Jell-O to the wall. God bless

Okay, this poster has a hammer if you need it. God Bless, my friend.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

YouTube

youtube.com/watch?v=6LP3XkeeZuk&feature=PlayList&p=FDDD93CE2030E900&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6

Just short of six minutes.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

400 posts and nearly 4,000 views.

Perhaps the topic has been exhausted?

 

[Spirithound]

“Jim and the Indians”
e-mago.co.il/e-magazine/jatiamq-kgng.html
“Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of several armed men in uniform.
…

What should he do?”

Thank you. Here is my answer:

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse. --John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Killing an innocent man would be a sin, which Jim may not commit. So, either he does not shoot someone, or he gets in front of the gun himself.

 

[Christopher68]

Sorry Christopher, my post came nowhere near being an ad hominem. Still waiting for your response.

I didn’t say it was an ad hominem attack, but I am not sure why you are asking me further questions regarding my response to the earlier post.

Let me attempt to clarify:

An earlier post had asked why one thing received government protection and another did not. I gave the reason why I believed ‘society’ made that determination. I didn’t say this was ‘my’ position. Again, I only gave the reason why society determined this do be so. You can argue with ‘society’ all you want.

 

[Doc_Keele]

Thank you. Here is my answer:

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse. --John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Killing an innocent man would be a sin, which Jim may not commit. So, either he does not shoot someone, or he gets in front of the gun himself.

So 20 or 21 people die instead of just one?

 

[Lethe]

What if (and I knw this isnt the case in the majority of abortions, but it is something that troubles me) the mother’s life is at risk by having the baby, or even both lives are at risk?

I’m not sure how I feel about potential life and souls vs. the present, which I think is really what a lot of pro-choice people differ on opinions in from pro-lifers - If I don’t believe the potential life is as important as an already developed life, then I’m looking at first an unconscious grouping of cells, or a foetus which is human, certainly, but has only developed to the point of an animal, or not even that at early stages.

 

[jrgiancola]

Abortion is a horrible sin. However, it’s unwise to give the government any control over procreative decisions which must remain the province of the parents. Two hundred years from now, in a world of 15 billion people, instead of 6 billion, with mass starvation, the government could use its control over procreative decisions to outlaw more than one child per family as they do in China. There are countless ways to overcome abortion, particularly striving to make humanity aware of the sanctity of ALL human life.

 

[fix]

Abortion is a horrible sin. However, it’s unwise to give the government any control over procreative decisions which must remain the province of the parents. Two hundred years from now, in a world of 15 billion people, instead of 6 billion, with mass starvation, the government could use its control over procreative decisions to outlaw more than one child per family as they do in China. There are countless ways to overcome abortion, particularly striving to make humanity aware of the sanctity of ALL human life.

Pretty hard to teach people that killing is wrong when the state endorses it. The law is a teacher.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

*Pretty hard to teach people that killing is wrong when the state endorses it. The law is a teacher. *

It’s strange that many of the same people who oppose the death penalty for guilty people who commit extremely violent crimes at the same time advocate no intereference of the law in the slaughter of 50 million innocent babies in the womb.

 

[Doc_Keele]

Pretty hard to teach people that killing is wrong when the state endorses it. The law is a teacher.

Not if you subscribe to the positivist school of jurisprudence.

 

[JimG]

What if (and I knw this isnt the case in the majority of abortions, but it is something that troubles me) the mother’s life is at risk by having the baby, or even both lives are at risk?

I’m not sure how I feel about potential life and souls vs. the present, which I think is really what a lot of pro-choice people differ on opinions in from pro-lifers - If I don’t believe the potential life is as important as an already developed life, then I’m looking at first an unconscious grouping of cells, or a foetus which is human, certainly, but has only developed to the point of an animal, or not even that at early stages.

If the law strictly limited abortion to cases in which the mother’s life was endangered, 98% of abortions now being performed would not occur. But such laws are not permitted under the rules of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton.

In the original Hippocratic Oath, physicians pledged not to perform abortions. Hippocrates lived around 450 BC. If physicians back then thought it was a bad thing to take a human life, it should be even more so today, when our embryological knowledge leaves no doubt of the humanity of the unborn child. Everyone knows that a new human being begins at conception. But if abortion were allowed to save the life of the mother, 98% of abortions would not occur. That’s the sort of compromise law that state legislatures used to be able to make, but can no longer do so.

Now, we have 4D sonogram clinics advertising their ability to show movies of baby’s first smile, yawn, or stretching, in the womb. Parents can get these early videos of their children, or they can legally go to an abortion clinic to have the same child torn limb from limb. I’m amazed at the lengths to which many pro-choice organizations will go to avoid even the most minimal of regulations of abortion. And I’m amazed that the U.S. Supreme Court removed from state legislatures and the people they represent the ability to make such regulations.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Doc Keele

*Not if you subscribe to the positivist school of jurisprudence. *



I am interested in formal philosophical arguments not rhetoric

Then would it be fair to say you are not interested in the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Inependence, the Gettysburgh Address, or almost any passage from Shakespeare?

It’s true that rhetorical devices can be abused. Hitler was famous for that. But they can also be used to great positive effect.

What is *not *an effective way to develop a philosophical conversation is to use little more than abstract one-line statements that leave the reader craving for flesh-and-blood on that bare bone.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The Hippocratic Oath: Classical Version

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. **Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. **In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

 

[Doc_Keele]

Doc Keele

*Not if you subscribe to the positivist school of jurisprudence. *



I am interested in formal philosophical arguments not rhetoric

Then would it be fair to say you are not interested in the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Inependence, the Gettysburgh Address, or almost any passage from Shakespeare?

It’s true that rhetorical devices can be abused. Hitler was famous for that. But they can also be used to great positive effect.

What is *not *an effective way to develop a philosophical conversation is to use little more than abstract one-line statements that leave the reader craving for flesh-and-blood on that bare bone.

Yes, I shouldn’t construct elaborate arguments based on someone’s signature if I were you.
Rhetoric of course has its place.

 

[seekerz]

I am pro-choice (I am not a Catholic, please dont start arguing with me!) but I think the best thing pro-lifers could do to further their cause is get a lot of support out there for pregnant women who might be tempted to get an abortion.

I think a lot of the pro-choice support (mine included) is that I feel many women are poor, young, without family/partner support, and quite simply terrified about pregnancy, birth and raising a child. A lot are not religious, and so probably despise being judged for having sex outside marriage, but I think religious or not, would be persuaded to keep a child if they had support around them, and the message that keeping the child can be positive to their life, not negative.

So I’d say, it isnt what you SAY to win the argument, but what you DO.

Thank you for that perspective. I’ve been trying to say the same thing on this forum for a couple years now. Persuasion to not have an abortion is not achieved by smart slogans or angry rhetoric but by helping people to a place where they appreciate that ALL life is worth living: theirs, the unborn, everyone’s. Demonizing people, some of whom don’t even appreciate the value of* their own lives*, is certainly not the way to do it. Neither is a “big stick of the law” approach likely to get very much achieved. Some keep looking for a quick fix nevertheless.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

seekerz

*Thank you for that perspective. I’ve been trying to say the same thing on this forum for a couple years now. Persuasion to not have an abortion is not achieved by smart slogans or angry rhetoric but by helping people to a place where they appreciate that ALL life is worth living: theirs, the unborn, everyone’s. Demonizing people, some of whom don’t even appreciate the value of their own lives, is certainly not the way to do it. Neither is a “big stick of the law” approach likely to get very much achieved. Some keep looking for a quick fix nevertheless. *

It is really **depressing to me **that so many Catholics are pro-choice; that so many Catholics will march against war and the death penalty, but will not move their tongues against the butchers of babies. Are they getting this pro-choice view from inside the Church or from outside the Church or from both?

English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”

---

 

[fix]

Doc Keele

*Not if you subscribe to the positivist school of jurisprudence. *



I am interested in formal philosophical arguments not rhetoric

Then would it be fair to say you are not interested in the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Inependence, the Gettysburgh Address, or almost any passage from Shakespeare?

It’s true that rhetorical devices can be abused. Hitler was famous for that. But they can also be used to great positive effect.

What is *not *an effective way to develop a philosophical conversation is to use little more than abstract one-line statements that leave the reader craving for flesh-and-blood on that bare bone.

For good, and ill, people form their consciences by looking to things like the civil law. Eclecticism, aside, people think that if it is legal it must be acceptable.