Why do some Catholics support legal abortion?

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QUOTE=zalo;9284573]“pro-death individuals will attempt…”
  • start wars of choice but be against abortion = pro-life
  • be against wars and work all your life for peace, but be pro-choice = pro-death
    QUOTE]
A very common, weak argument used by Catholics who wish to justify their support of the pro-abortion political party. They try to equate “war-mongering” (usually vaguely) to abortion. Sometimes they’ll “use” immigrant rights, taking care of the poor, the evils of mammon, etc. in that role as well.

These Catholics flagrantly disregard Church teachings on the non-negotiable stand against abortion & will make the above argument(s) to “feel” better about their stance.

Years ago I was “pro-choice”. I happened to see a video of an actual abortion & God gave me a grace to see the horror of it & I changed. I pray the same grace for these deceived Catholics. Peace
 
“pro-death individuals will attempt…”

I really don’t see how one can be called ‘pro-death’ just for being in favor of a woman’s right to choose. This is just calling names, and the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-death’ labels are complete misnomers that have served the Church extremely well.
This allows the Church to support politicians who lie thru their teeth to start wars of choice, visiting ‘shock and awe’ bomb blasts to thousands of walking-and-talking human beings, while condemning and fighting tooth and nail against other politicians who merely want to leave the decision to the women. So:
  • start wars of choice but be against abortion = pro-life
  • be against wars and work all your life for peace, but be pro-choice = pro-death
I may be wrong here, but I fail to see the least shred of consistency in such reasoning!:confused:
Yes, you’re wrong here. Killing of an innocent baby in its mother’s womb is never justifiable. No matter what else we do, that act is pure sin. It is murder of a baby. Not a choice. The decision to kill her baby should never be made by any woman. Women deserve better than that kind of “choice.”
 
Juliane

**The decision to kill her baby should never be made by any woman. Women deserve better than that kind of “choice.” **

I am pro-choice and it’s obvious the baby in the womb would choose life. 😃
 
For me, I have little conflict between my faith and my love of freedom in regards to abortion, as I see abortion as murder, ergo, an infringement on the right of the fetus to human life, and therefore, both American political sentiment (right to life) and Catholic teaching are perfectly compatible here.
 
Its kinda both, actually. The current laws as written doesn’t allow for abortion to be a criminal act. But that just means those laws would have to be changed.

Too, I haven’t seen a good legal justification for the criminalization of abortion.

I know.

No, by all means, if you think abortion should be criminalized then do the things you think you should do to further your cause.

Well, the onus is on those who want it criminalized. I don’t have to prove that abortion should be legal, its visa versa.

Again, though, its up to those that are against abortion being legal to make the compelling case that it needs to be criminalized. Keep in mind that it must have a secular purpose and also be constitutional.

But you need to offer more than just your own credulity on the matter. You’d have to show how and why criminalizing abortion is better for society.

Too, you have to keep the mother’s rights in consideration. The Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that her rights outweighed those of the potential person, iirc.

Well, I am replying 😉

What do you mean by “actively support”? Typing my opinions in response to the question on a discussion forum is hardly “actively supporting abortion being legal”, imho. Its not like I’m donating money, or picketing with signs, or anything really.
Hmmm… the more I think about the phrase ‘actively support’ the less sure I beccome of exactly what I mean by it. :o I must have restarted this post at least five times by now. lol. 🙂

What I was trying to get at in my post, (and I thought I was getting at by using the term ‘active’) was the importance, when there is clearly a divided opinion on whether or not a particular action meets the standards for something that should be illegal/legal, of making a personal inquiry into the matter before deciding to take a stand on one side or the other. Yes, when faced with a decision one must make a choice, even if one know they haven’t fully looked into a situation, but to advocate for one side of a controversy without fully looking into the matter and without the intention of looking into it further seems wrong. Lets pretend we are back in the days when slavery was a controversial subject. Many people claimed different things and took different sides, would it really have been a good thing for someone to sit back and say you know… theres a whole bunch of arguments on both sides of this issue, it seems like it would be a huge pain to sort them out… so I think I won’t bother, after all, I know which side to vote for, always vote on the side of making a practice legal unless there is incontrevertible evidence that it meets the standards of what should be made legal/illegal. It seems the more important the issue the more involved someone should become in determining what the right course of action is.

Basically, I was trying to point out that one shouldn’t choose a side legally while remaining satisfied with ignorence of a) the reality of a particular action and its consequences (rather than simply a perceived reality) or b) where that particular action lines up with respect to the standards to which laws must be held. Which in turn demands that each person have some knowledge of what those standards are.

Maybe I am wrong about this, but I get the idea from a lot of people (not necessarily you) that they have lost sight of the fact that just because the laws of a society are not dictated by a particular religion, there must still be some standard to which law must be held. I get the impression that for many people this standard, mostly because they do not realize that there needs to be such a fixed standard, is a sliding one which changes based on a person’s emotions, empathy, bias, and preconceived notions that have been culturally ingrained etc. Now, obviously there is no practical way to remove bias etc from the world, we are all human, we all have biases. But what could help is if people began to realize the need of actually having some sort of fixed standard up to which they hold the laws. Gosh… this is kind of just turning into a rant… :o sorry about that. Its getting late so I am not really keeping everything straight. But I hope this is somehow helpful to see what I mean. 🙂
 
The Catholic Church did not change its position on abortion in 2000 years. The entire world including the Catholic Church did change its position on when life begins quite recently. You really can not compare abortion before and after this scientific discovery. The quickening laws were passed because their was no other way for society to prove that a woman was pregnant. You can not say that abortion was allowed in the first trimester when the people at the time had no idea that the woman was in her first trimester.
 
No, the point is that a single cell is not morally equivalent to a fully developed person.
They are not equal biologically or morally.
People hardly flinch at the fact that most conceptuses are lost. If they really were morally equivalent to people, then all the effort put towards combatting abortion should instead be put towards finding a way to stop all the miscarriages.
That is not true. Acts of nature are not the same as acts of violence.
There have been orders of magnitude more “human lives” lost to miscarriages than to abortions. In a pragmatic sense, abortion shouldn’t even be on the radar.
It is not simply a numbers game. More people die from heart attacks than murder. That does not mean murder is less of a problem.
Since people seem to care more about stopping abortion than saving lives, it makes it look like this is more of an issue of punishing immorality than it is an issue of protecting unborn people.
Punishing murder is a must. The law is a teacher. If we think we are “free” to murder that impacts all of society more than acts of nature.
 
Right, so, for you, its not as much about protecting human life as it is about punishing immorality.
No, for us it is about protecting innocent life from being unjustly taken. Most rational people understand this point well.
If your ultimate goal is the prevention of death, then car accidents would be much more important than murder because so many more people die in car accidents than are murdered. On the other hand, if your more interested in punishing immorality then you would focus entirely on the murders at the expense of the car crashes.
If you think accidents are the same as murder than there is a deeper problem. We are not utilitarians or consequentialists.
And what do we see with regard to saving unborn lives? All the effort is put towards combatting abortion rather than ending miscarriages. This implies that the issue is more about fighting immorality than it is about saving unborn lives.
You want to deflect the argument. You start from a false premise.
But that brings up another issue. Fighting a perceived immorality that stems from religious beliefs is not a sufficient basis for the criminalization of abortion. There must also be a secular purpose. This is why the debate gets focused onto the point at which human life begins and legal personal rights are bestowed up the individual. We end up getting to the point of protecting unborn lives, but if the arguments are correct, given that so many more lives have been lost to miscarriages than to abortions, it doesn’t make sense that nobody really fights to stop miscarriages like they do to stop abortions.
Your point makes no sense. The law is aimed at correcting criminal behavior not controling nature.
I’d be like you saying that you fight murders to protect lives all the while failing to do anything to protect all the lives that are lost to car accidents. It goes to show that you’re not really in it for protecting lives, but instead want to punish a religious immorality. The problem with that is that it is an insufficient basis to legally criminalize abortion.
That is absurd. Try starting from an authentic premise rather than making goofy claims and then attacking the claims.
 
Juliane

**The decision to kill her baby should never be made by any woman. Women deserve better than that kind of “choice.” **

I am pro-choice and it’s obvious the baby in the womb would choose life. 😃
Yes, I am pro-choice FOR THE BABY as well.

👍
 
Q: Why do some Catholics support legal abortion?

A: One reason is…

"an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a Catholic approach to “thinking with the Church”, each person believes he or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ.

Consequently, rather than being transformed and renewed in mind, Christians are easily tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age (cf. Rom 12:3).

We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion."

–Pope Benedict XVI

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080416_response-bishops_en.html
 
How can anyone presume to mandate that a woman sacrifice her own life? Have saints done it? Certainly. Do we all follow the example of all canonized saints? Shall we all live in the woods as John the Baptist? Shall we cut our faces as St Rose?
A woman who chooses between the life of her unborn child and her own life, as well as the life of her other children, and her husband, meets a unique discernment that can only be her own. The magisterium can inform, but not dictate her decision. I believe that abortion is the death of a child, but should being unborn give a child priority over so many other lives? The only one who can say is the child’s mother.should she choose to eliminate the life after true soul searching, it is of courses tragedy, but not for us to judge. If she believes she has no other choice, and is trying to do best to follow what God calls hero do, no one an mandate it otherwise.
Let me ask you, if you were walking down the street with you child, 6 year old girl, and a man walked up to you with a gun and tried to kill your daughter, the only option to saver her was to throw yourself in front of your child. It’s the perfect situation because the only window of opportunity for the shot was this moment, the police were right there. Would you sacrifice your life for your daughter, I would without a thought and I bet you would too. It’s called heroic virtue. The only difference in this case is, the baby girl is still in your womb, how can mothers choose to kill their children? It makes me sick to my stomach how people, and in this thread so many Catholics disregard the child for the sake of the mother, and in many cases not for her life but for her convenience.

You know, I’ve participated in this thread for quite a while and I’ve backed into a lurking role because it’s so frustrating arguing with Catholics on this and other issues, in fact it’s depressing.

I’m tired of trying to convince by being nice and sweet because many don’t want to get it, they know too much; heck you know more than the magisterium, whom Jesus gave the authority to bind and loose! This is where the confusion rests, civil or Natural/Divine law who is in control.

On our judgment day God will not be standing before us asking us if His law matches what we think is legal or acceptable. Do you think He will be explaining His actions by directing His Church? That sounds a little backwards to me, how about you?
How does this sound? Isaiah 5:20-21

“Ah! Those who call evil good, and good evil,
who change darkness to light, and light into darkness,
who change bitter to sweet, and sweet into bitter!
Ah! Those who are wise in their own eyes,
prudent in their own view!”

We are there, when the people call good evil, and evil good. When people like us who defend life get ridiculed and called backward thinking. Abortion is intrinsically evil; there is no option of abortion. That’s God’s law through His Church; there is no way to justify the scourge. You may not agree and think it to be barbaric to force a woman to not have an abortion, but that is what is prescribed.
You can hate me and people like me, but I preach the truth from the pulpit. My leader in the truth is the Church, not Barach Obama or GWB, not the Republican or Democrat party. The view of the Church is the centrist view. Abortion is intrinsically evil, that is the center, killing an abortion doctor is far right, legalized abortion is far left. It’s time for us Catholics, whether we believe it or not to preach the truth in our lives or shut up and get out of the way. Being nice and appeasing the masses for the sake of tolerance is the devils work, and he has many helpmates; and sadly many of them claim to be Catholic.

Come on Catholic people, seek the truth, and seek what God directs you through His Church. If you reject His Church you reject Him, He is the Head. You may not like these words, I am a herald of the Gospel, and I preach it in season and out of season…especially out of season because this is when more souls are lost. Those who speak and work against the Church speak and work against God. It’s that simple.
 
The sperm and egg cells are alive before conception. What you have after conception is the potential for a new person. But even then, most of them don’t make it to personhood.

A good way to determine personhood that I’ve seen is to look at the other end of the specrum: the right to die versus artificial suscitation. Ya know, “pulling the plug” on people. The legality there gets into things like having a heartbeat and a functioning brain, and stuff like that. I’d have to look it up though and don’t have time right now.There is nothing to look up, life is from conception to natural death, yes even miscarriage is natural death and in no way justifies abortion.

The point I was making there is that people hide behind the “saving human life” reasons for supporting the criminalization of abortion when they’re more insterested in preventing what they think is immoral behavior.Sorry, but it is in fact the salvation of souls. People die every day from their earthly life, but if that was it, wouldn’t that be sad? Our choices here determine where we spend eternity. It is our duty as Catholics to spread truth, not our super intellect. Since most conceptions fail to implant, if you really cared about saving human lives, then you’d be doing a lot more by funding scientific research into the prevention of miscarriages than you would fighting abortion. But nobody ever talks about saving human life by fighting miscarriages and that goes to show that they’re not really so concerned about saving human lives, but instead want to prevent immorality,I’m not hiding the fact that I am concerned about your soul. God’s law out ways earthly laws. I admit it is immoral to believe in, or work in support of abortion in any way. There, I’ve said it…whew. Glad I got that off my chest!😃 which weakens the case against legal abortion because its more of a religious matter than a secular one.
This is the way we justify ourselves, by muddying the waters. Miscarriage…euthanasia…

This is a discussion of the intrinsic evil of the scourge of abortion, stick to the discussion or stop posting. You been arguing miscarriages for days now, this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of abortion but to confuse and redirect.

Simple question for you supper smart Catholics, why do you support the killing of innocent life when your Church and God through His Church has directed you to not support, but in fact requires you to protect & defend?

There is no debate about when life begins in the Church, outside of the Church there is; but you claim to be inside the Church. If you are inside, it’s time for you to rethink your opinions, not in the books you’ve been studying, but the books that can help you see truth and be healing to your soul, the Bible, CCC, Humane Vitea, etc.
 
When I say “prevent immorality” I am referring to the immorality of taking an innocent human life.
Good job Leaf, but it will be turned around on you. Keep preaching truth; it is immoral to take human life period. So if it makes the argument for the other side that I am fighting for morality, then that is their choice. Miscarriage is natural, and God’s will. Abortion is unnatural and man’s will.

I’ll stick with the will of God.👍
 
“pro-death individuals will attempt…”

I really don’t see how one can be called ‘pro-death’ just for being in favor of a woman’s right to choose. This is just calling names, and the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-death’ labels are complete misnomers that have served the Church extremely well.
This allows the Church to support politicians who lie thru their teeth to start wars of choice, visiting ‘shock and awe’ bomb blasts to thousands of walking-and-talking human beings, while condemning and fighting tooth and nail against other politicians who merely want to leave the decision to the women. So:
  • start wars of choice but be against abortion = pro-life
  • be against wars and work all your life for peace, but be pro-choice = pro-death
I may be wrong here, but I fail to see the least shred of consistency in such reasoning!:confused:
Well, I’d have to agree to a certain point in your argument. We do speak out of both sides of our mouth. Some of us who defend the unborn speak in favor of capital punishment and war. Blessed John Paul II caused me to rethink and discern my view on the war against terror after 911. He made a bold statement that it was an unjust war and should not be waged. That blew me away. It caused me to think about the whole situation and came to understand why he said it, because he was right.

Capital punishment is another area where I had to do some soul searching, and I now understand what the Church teaches and why. So my views on these two topics have changed, but not before my view on abortion changed. In my younger days, you know those enlightened years, I thought I knew it all. Then the Church started teaching me I wasn’t so smart.😃

Anyway, yes pro-abortion is pro-death…the choice is death. Pro-life is pro-life because the choice is life. The problem comes in when we don’t support other life issues, that’s where we lose credibility.

But make no mistake about it; abortion outweighs all other issues because of its classification of "intrinsic evil”. CP is not intrinsically evil, and can be used justly in some cases. But in most modern societies this is not true and is not justified, especially here in the USA, we have the means in all cases to incarcerate not kill.
 
Well, I’d have to agree to a certain point in your argument. We do speak out of both sides of our mouth. Some of us who defend the unborn speak in favor of capital punishment and war. Blessed John Paul II caused me to rethink and discern my view on the war against terror after 911. Mistake on my part here, I meant to say the Iraq war, not the responce to the 911 attacks, sorry. He made a bold statement that it was an unjust war and should not be waged. That blew me away. It caused me to think about the whole situation and came to understand why he said it, because he was right.

Capital punishment is another area where I had to do some soul searching, and I now understand what the Church teaches and why. So my views on these two topics have changed, but not before my view on abortion changed. In my younger days, you know those enlightened years, I thought I knew it all. Then the Church started teaching me I wasn’t so smart.😃

Anyway, yes pro-abortion is pro-death…the choice is death. Pro-life is pro-life because the choice is life. The problem comes in when we don’t support other life issues, that’s where we lose credibility.

But make no mistake about it; abortion outweighs all other issues because of its classification of "intrinsic evil”. CP is not intrinsically evil, and can be used justly in some cases. But in most modern societies this is not true and is not justified, especially here in the USA, we have the means in all cases to incarcerate not kill.
 
This is the way we justify ourselves, by muddying the waters.
The truth of the matter is that we all know the right thing to do.
Right and wrong are easy to discern.

Complications come when we try to make wrong right.
 
“pro-death individuals will attempt…”

I really don’t see how one can be called ‘pro-death’ just for being in favor of a woman’s right to choose. This is just calling names, and the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-death’ labels are complete misnomers that have served the Church extremely well.
This allows the Church to support politicians who lie thru their teeth to start wars of choice, visiting ‘shock and awe’ bomb blasts to thousands of walking-and-talking human beings, while condemning and fighting tooth and nail against other politicians who merely want to leave the decision to the women. So:
  • start wars of choice but be against abortion = pro-life
  • be against wars and work all your life for peace, but be pro-choice = pro-death
I may be wrong here, but I fail to see the least shred of consistency in such reasoning!:confused:
There is no consistency in it. The names are being called out of emotion, and are based on issues that are most important to the so-called name-caller. You can line up ten people who call themselves “pro-life” and can find ten different inconsistencies (such as in your example above) that make another person claim that the previous person isn’t ‘pro-life’ enough.

For example, it never fails that when I have a conversation online with a person who calls her/himself “pro-life” that it seems they don’t care about that life once it’s born. I’ve always found that kind of odd, in addition to an opposite of “pro-life” but it makes perfect sense to them. All of our personal reasons and rationales make sense to us though, so it’s not surprising, just rather typical.
 
There is no consistency in it. The names are being called out of emotion, and are based on issues that are most important to the so-called name-caller.
No emotion at all.
I use pro-death for exactly what it is.

An individual in favor of death.
 
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