AdsoOfFunkstown:
Except for purely medical reasons, I believe abortion is morally wrong. However, I am pro-choice, because I don’t think civil law should be in the business of making moral decisions. There are just some times when the decision has to be left to the individual.
I am not, however, opposed to the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion, since they are in the morality business.
Ah, but you see I do not feel that Church/State separation has been defined decently except by Benedict XVI who said that the Church is the conscience of the State. What are people thinking? That the Church and State are tossed into the melee of culture in competition so that the strongest may win? That would mean that the law of force would win over the force of law.
No, the Church and the State are married and always have been from time immemorial even before the Church was called ‘the Church,’ way back when home was a tribe and wisdom was sought from the medicine man or woman. It is wisdom that is the gift that goes on giving. Force is a temporal whimsy with long-term – and counterproductive consequences.
Those arguing for a secular state are not arguing against faith, they are arguing for the supremacy of their
own faith which is a faith in the law of force, the bully gang, the individual run amok. The last thing such a person can conceive of or would want is a faith tempered in the fire of millennia of struggle, faith, martyrdom, sainthood, and…well…other people. That kind of faith demands accountability and purpose in an age when arrogance and forgetfulness are de rigeur.
While it seems reasonable that the State should have some autonomy in deciding what is ‘the good,’ there are some things which cannot be decided on proportional merits. Abortion, for example: arguments are that it is a question of the lesser of two evils. That is a proportional argument.
The ‘harm’ to the mother of carrying an unborn infant to term is not absolute, it changes with time, it is a statistical phenomenon, and it can in many cases be considered temporary and redeemable. After all, the mother gets to keep her life. Time is on her side.
The ‘harm’ to the unborn infant, on the other hand, is absolute, permanent, and irredeemable. The infant does not get to keep his or her life and the question of time being on the infant’s side is moot because the infant has no time. Therefore the proportional argument does not apply in cases of abortion. To say that the certain and permanent harm to the infant is balanced against the possible and temporary harm to the mother is sheer lunacy.
In any case, prochoice doesn’t even have a case. Roe vs Wade was just plain badly drafted law. This case could never establish the point in time where ‘personhood’ commences, yet all of its arguments violate the ‘person’ of the unborn infant and therefore violate the Constitution of the United States. Roe vs Wade is an evasion which begets an army of evasions in its wade.
Prochoice is no choice. Why? Because if it were a choice then all the cards would be on the table each time a woman confronts the question of whether or not to have an abortion. The fact is that critical information is withheld from her at a time when she is vulnerable and sorely in need of all the information.
Studies have shown that the majority of pregnant women who are allowed to see a sonogram of their unborn infants choose to carry the infant to term. Why? Because it becomes obvious that the unborn infant is not a blob of tissue but a human ‘person’ with a life of his or her own and therefore has an absolute right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Studies have also shown that the majority of pregnant women who are offered support through their pregnancies choose to carry their infants to term. Why? Because issues of community, economics, health and so on are weighed proportionately against the overwhelming weight of human neighbourliness and compassion.
Teaching women that their actions can have no consequences is iniquitous in the extreme. There are heavy consequences to the emotional and physical health of most women who have abortions – and these consequences last for decades often ending fatally in suicide or breast cancer.
Yep, my kind are few.
