"Well, I'm Catholic and I'm pro-choice..."

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vern_humphrey said:
Let’s remember that Roe v. Wade was not an election. The American people have never been allowed to vote on abortioni – and when segments of them are allowed (as in North Dakota) they are likely to severely restrict it.

What we need to do is push Roe v. Wade aside – it was, after all, the Supreme Court deciding by fiat something that was not politically viable – a 20th Century version of the disasterous Dred Scott decision. Let us then work state-by-state to stop this crime.

But the key is social disapproval of abortion. And society expresses its disapproval of intollerable acts by making them illegal.
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I’m not as confident that I’d like the results of a vote of it were held today. Abortion has been status quo for a generation. the world has become more secular during that time.

The vote in (conservative) South Dakota did not go our way. The law that was orginally passed and then overturned by voters in South Dakota, (full ban, basically in line with Catholic teaching) is what I want on the books, but I think I’d take a merely restrictive law that stands over a full ban that gets shot down. But the full ban would have forced the Roe issue.

Roe could be overturned without a vote, and should be, but we better have a plan about what we’re going to do when that happens. Because that’s when the fun is really going to start. I’d bet everything I own that there will be at least 10 state constitutional amendments protecting the “right” to abortion proposed within a week of Roe falling. Do we think we’re going to stop those in New York, California and Massachusetts? The pro-aborts are going to get very active FAST if Roe falls and we’re the ones who will have to do double the work at that point to change the staus quo. Even if we put up a huge effort and defeat every amendment, we’re still left with legal abortion.

I’m not trying to disagree. I’m tryng to figure out how we get from here to where we want to be.

No matter what, we need numbers. We have to win people over from either pro-abort or apathy. I’d just as soon win them over fully into our camp, with the help of the Holy Spirit, than try to win them over to pro-life with purely secular arguments and leave them otherwise “of this world.”

I hopes for South Dakota, but now i have to ask, how do we get there from here?
 
It’s time for Catholics to speak in a loud and clear voice that abortion is about killing babies not a woman’s right to choose. Legal battles are legal battles but abortion is and always has been an offense against God and humanity. Even Norma McCorvey, who was represented as Jane Roe in the landmark abortion case is now a pro-life activist and works to overturn the decision that led to abortion on demand.

How many of you have been in a discussion/debate about abortion only to watch the Catholic and pro-life Christian participants fade into the background as the pro-abortion debaters paint us as extremists because we oppose abortion (in any form), pre-marital sex, contraception, euthanasia, stem-cell research etc.? In most cases the pro-life advocates will use invective and belittling language to put pro-life people on the defensive. It’s time to step up to the plate, call a spade a spade and vigorously fight back; worry about the legal battles later.

Iowa Mike
 
PapaSquash said:
I’m not as confident that I’d like the results of a vote of it were held today. Abortion has been status quo for a generation. the world has become more secular during that time.

The vote in (conservative) South Dakota did not go our way. The law that was orginally passed and then overturned by voters in South Dakota, (full ban, basically in line with Catholic teaching) is what I want on the books, but I think I’d take a merely restrictive law that stands over a full ban that gets shot down. But the full ban would have forced the Roe issue.

Roe could be overturned without a vote, and should be, but we better have a plan about what we’re going to do when that happens. Because that’s when the fun is really going to start. I’d bet everything I own that there will be at least 10 state constitutional amendments protecting the “right” to abortion proposed within a week of Roe falling. Do we think we’re going to stop those in New York, California and Massachusetts? The pro-aborts are going to get very active FAST if Roe falls and we’re the ones who will have to do double the work at that point to change the staus quo. Even if we put up a huge effort and defeat every amendment, we’re still left with legal abortion.

I’m not trying to disagree. I’m tryng to figure out how we get from here to where we want to be.

No matter what, we need numbers. We have to win people over from either pro-abort or apathy. I’d just as soon win them over fully into our camp, with the help of the Holy Spirit, than try to win them over to pro-life with purely secular arguments and leave them otherwise “of this world.”

I hopes for South Dakota, but now i have to ask, how do we get there from here?
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When I went to Catholic schools, I was on the boxing team – and I learned that when you’re in the ring, it’s a mistake to think if you don’t hit the other guy, he won’t hit you.

We need judges who will overturn Roe V Wade. We need judges who undestand the right to life in the 5th Amendment applies to us all. And we need to hammer, hammer, hammer on the abortion issue.
 
Iowa_Mike said:
Even Norma McCorvey, who was represented as Jane Roe in the landmark abortion case is now a pro-life activist and works to overturn the decision that led to abortion on demand.
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That’s a really interesting fact. I didn’t know that. Good thing to bring up in a debate/discussion.
Iowa_Mike said:
How many of you have been in a discussion/debate about abortion only to watch the Catholic and pro-life Christian participants fade into the background as the pro-abortion debaters paint us as extremists because we oppose abortion (in any form), pre-marital sex, contraception, euthanasia, stem-cell research etc.? In most cases the pro-life advocates will use invective and belittling language to put pro-life people on the defensive. It’s time to step up to the plate, call a spade a spade and vigorously fight back; worry about the legal battles later./QUOTE]

Actually the “debate” I talked about in the opening post was the very first discussion I’ve had with someone who was prochoice. It went okay for me but mostly because they didn’t have too strong of an argument and two were Catholic(I hope I changed their hearts).

My sister though, who goes to a Jesuit university, has had to deal with an apathetic “liberal Catholic”(someone who goes to a church with hideous liturgical abuses and is okay with) who loves the v-monologues(play sort of thing which promotes “freedom” for women). The girl(not my sister) just laughs at my sister’s attempt to argue for the lives of millions.
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TheApologist said:
My sister though, who goes to a Jesuit university, has had to deal with an apathetic “liberal Catholic”(someone who goes to a church with hideous liturgical abuses and is okay with) who loves the v-monologues(play sort of thing which promotes “freedom” for women). The girl(not my sister) just laughs at my sister’s attempt to argue for the lives of millions.
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Unfortunately within the Catholic Church today there are a lot of dissidents who are working hard to change the Church into their concept of religion. Among other things they want secularize the Church through legalized abortion, approval of all contraception methods, acceptance of euthanasia, acceptance of divorce, female priests, acceptance of homosexuals, transgenders, etc. They don’t want any rules that would interfere with whatever they want to do. One thing common to all of these groups and their members is their arrogance. Their arguments are usually condesending in tone and they are quick to ridicule anyone that doesn’t hold with their beliefs. They accomplish this by laughing at your views, classifying you a radical if you don’t support their secular views, a religious zealot if you bring up religion, a bigot if you oppose their views on homosexuality, etc. Pro-life people that run into this kind of argument should go on the offense, something that most pro-choice people arn’t used to and don’t like very much.

Iowa Mike
 
Iowa_Mike said:
Unfortunately within the Catholic Church today there are a lot of dissidents who are working hard to change the Church into their concept of religion. Among other things they want secularize the Church through legalized abortion, approval of all contraception methods, acceptance of euthanasia, acceptance of divorce, female priests, acceptance of homosexuals, transgenders, etc. They don’t want any rules that would interfere with whatever they want to do. One thing common to all of these groups and their members is their arrogance. Their arguments are usually condesending in tone and they are quick to ridicule anyone that doesn’t hold with their beliefs. They accomplish this by laughing at your views, classifying you a radical if you don’t support their secular views, a religious zealot if you bring up religion, a bigot if you oppose their views on homosexuality, etc. Pro-life people that run into this kind of argument should go on the offense, something that most pro-choice people arn’t used to and don’t like very much.

Iowa Mike
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Sadly, the Catholic bishops collectively – with a few shining individual exceptions – have not given us the pastoral guidance and leadership we need in this crisis.
 
TheApologist said:
I feel like God is suddenly strongly calling me to stand up.
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I felt strongly called as well. And I have never figured out why. But I stand up anyway.

Forgive me but I have reached the point where all I feel like saying to an abortion-promoter is:
  1. Please never come to my church; and
  2. if you do come to my church, please make sure you don’t take communion;
  3. Whatever you decide, please don’t bring up this issue with me again until you have read enough to hold up your end of the discussion.
I know this isn’t charitable. I feel like I have to choose between those babies and those who would murder them. I also feel unheard – sometimes by members of my own Church: pro-choice ‘Catholics.’ God forgive them. God forgive me. God helps us all.

A friend of mine was working on a pro-life project and received emails from pro-choicers claiming to be ‘Catholic.’ She simply referred these errant emails to the appropriate bishops.
 
TheApologist said:
But, alas, this is the point on which my friends disagree with the Catholic Church. They say the emotional damage of birthing the child and then putting it up for adoption will be greater than having an abortion.
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They haven’t thought it through. the only way to determine this logically is to set it down on paper following the Principle of Double Effect.

Principle of Double Effect:

For the act in question to be licit, all Five Tests for Double Effect must be met.
  1. The object of the act must not be intrinsically contradictory to one’s fundamental commitment to God and neighbor (including oneself), that is, it must be a good action judged by its moral object (in other words, the action must not be intrinsically evil);
  2. The direct intention of the agent must be to achieve the beneficial effects and to avoid the foreseen harmful effects as far as possible, that is, one must only indirectly intend the harm;
  3. The foreseen beneficial effects must not be achieved by means of the foreseen harmful effects, when no other means of achieving those effects are available;
  4. The foreseen beneficial effects must be equal to or greater than the foreseen harmful effects (the proportionate judgment);
  5. The beneficial effects must follow from the action at least as immediately as do the harmful effects.
Object of the Act

There are two categories of intention: proximate intention and indirect (remote or circumstantial) intention. It is the proximate intention which counts.
 
TheApologist said:
We should find the pro-lifers among us and find our common ground. Then we should create a nice little huge electrical storm of life and then we force the weak prochoice dingy out of the rational sea…Yeah that didn’t even make sense to me.

In our minds should be the thought of saving innocent children…enforcing the Truth. NOT battering prochoicers until they are lost and even worse off then before. Life should be at the forefront of our conversations.

Let’s do it!..Starts marching off to Eye of the Tiger melody :hug1: + :signofcross: + :highprayer: + :grouphug: = :rotfl: (that’s the closest to marching smiley they have … 😃 )
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Wow, I sure hope you write a novel some day. I’d be first in line to buy it! 🙂 👍

~~ the phoenix
 
vern_humphrey said:
But the key is social disapproval of abortion. And society expresses its disapproval of intollerable acts by making them illegal.
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Hiya, Uncle Vern! First of all I am fighting back tears reading this thread. I have been in many discussions on abortion, but I just feel so darn tired.

I have been quite intrigued and encouraged by the incremental changes in the law in the US. Things like the Unborn Victims of Violent Crime Act; Partial Birth Abortion Act; is there not also a Duty of Care for survivors of abortion procedures? Why? Because they sprang from the courts themselves.

The courts themselves were examining the incomprehensible Roe Act and decided that unborn babies are human beings and therefore subject to the law. I don’t know if that law includes the Constitution, but I assume it does. Also I believe there is no actual Right to Privacy in the Constitution. Am I correct?

In any case, quite apart from the law, it just demonstrates the ingenuity, pluck, and determination of Americans. I don’t know what will happen in Canada. It’s like shouting into the wind.
 
Cam-masta said:
I recently had a debate with an old aquaintance and he used the unwanted argument; that no child should be born “unwanted”.
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Henry Morgentaler – Canada’s face of abortion – said this. His parents were killed in the Nazi concentration camps. The adapative child part of his still forming personality developed the theory that ‘wanted children’ do not commit crimes against humanity. But that ‘unwanted children’ do commit these crimes. Moreover wanted children do not languish in ghettoes, don’t traffick in narcotics, pimp the innocent, sell their bodies, and so on.

His decision was to do as much as possible to make sure that unwanted children do not come into the world.

Trouble with that theory is that it is so easily shown to be racist, even genocidal. The Pro-choice movement has its origins in Margaret Sangster’s Birth Control movement which was always about controlling the number of births in one community above all others: that of African Americans.

Fully one third – at least – of the African American population have been decimated by abortion. Why? Because that’s where most of the abortuaries are located. In Canada most of the abortions are among the First Nations. Is Morgentaler saying that First Nations are more prone to crime? God help us.

:mad: :banghead: :crying:
 
the_phoenix said:
Wow, I sure hope you write a novel some day. I’d be first in line to buy it! 🙂 👍

~~ the phoenix
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hehe, thanks. I hope to one day(I’m not sure on what though). Metaphors are fun! Anyway, this thread is giving me a lot of beneficial info.
 
Ani_Ibi said:
Hiya, Uncle Vern! First of all I am fighting back tears reading this thread. I have been in many discussions on abortion, but I just feel so darn tired.

I have been quite intrigued and encouraged by the incremental changes in the law in the US. Things like the Unborn Victims of Violent Crime Act; Partial Birth Abortion Act; is there not also a Duty of Care for survivors of abortion procedures? Why? Because they sprang from the courts themselves.

The courts themselves were examining the incomprehensible Roe Act and decided that unborn babies are human beings and therefore subject to the law. I don’t know if that law includes the Constitution, but I assume it does. Also I believe there is no actual Right to Privacy in the Constitution. Am I correct?
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I’ll let you decide for yourself. The court found a right to privacy "emanating from the penumbra of the 14th Amendment.
Amendment XIV
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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.
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
**Section 3. **
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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I’ve read it forward and backward, and I can’t even find the penumbra!😛

But note the bolded section (my emphasis.) I guess the court didn’t read that far.

Now here’s the Fifth Amendment:
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.
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(My emphasis)
Ani_Ibi said:
In any case, quite apart from the law, it just demonstrates the ingenuity, pluck, and determination of Americans. I don’t know what will happen in Canada. It’s like shouting into the wind.
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And if we make progress, there is a good chance Canada may also make progress.
 
vern humphrey:
I’ve read it forward and backward, and I can’t even find the penumbra!
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Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The penumbra knows! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
vern humphrey:
And if we make progress, there is a good chance Canada may also make progress.
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OK. It just seems on the other hand that it fuels nonsense like “another victory for the American fundamentalist religious right.” :hypno: :dts:
 
Ani_Ibi said:
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The penumbra knows! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

OK. It just seems on the other hand that it fuels nonsense like “another victory for the American fundamentalist religious right.” :hypno: :dts:
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When they start calling names, you know they’ve lost the argument.
 
vern_humphrey said:
When they start calling names, you know they’ve lost the argument.
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You and I know but they’re like the energizer bunny. They just keep going and going and going.

Maybe we should start an ad agency. We could have pixel boards that announce to pro-choice folks that they have lost the argument. Just like that. Won’t that surprise them!

:extrahappy:
 
Ani_Ibi said:
You and I know but they’re like the energizer bunny. They just keep going and going and going.

Maybe we should start an ad agency. We could have pixel boards that announce to pro-choice folks that they have lost the argument. Just like that. Won’t that surprise them!

:extrahappy:
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That’s more or less what I do – and does it make them mad!:rotfl:
 
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