Why prohibit abortion sin with law and why not prohibit sin of greed with law?

[arvo]

Abortion is sin, it hurts people. That is why we should put anti-abortion measures into law.
Greed is sin, it is performed by refraining from redistribution. Greed hurts people. But we are not eager to put anti-greed measures into law. At least many orthodox catholics are against such measures and they say that such measures are the content of communism ideology.

So - why we are willing to put one sin/moral judgment into law and why are not willing to put another sin/moral judgment into law? Why we are giving citizens freedom to do one sin and why we are willing to take away this freedom to do another sin? Both sins hurt people. Both sins are against the principle of love thy neighbour.

If love is universal, then it should take holistic form and take all people into account.

 

[SuperLawyer]

Because there are entirely secular reasons to prohibit some abortions.

Even if we remove the theological aspect from the debate all together, at some juncture before birth, that baby can survive on its own outside the womb. This is typically around 22 weeks. At that point, that baby is entitled to the same due process rights as anyone else. The mother shouldn’t get to unilaterally deprive this independent person of life without affording him due process.

That’s why abortion can be legally regulated, but something as generic as greed cannot.

 

[fredystairs]

The problem, as I see it, is that it is difficult to define “greed.” As an example, we have two people who work hard all their life, scrimp and save and amass a savings of say $100,000 upon retirement. One person hoards it and thus is being greedy. The other takes a trip to their ancestral homeland to see where their grandparents were born and to bring some monetary assistance to their distant cousins. One is greedy the other not.

But let’s go back a few years before either person has retired and they each have $75,000 saved. Without knowing what each person is going to do with the money upon retirement, how do we know who’s being greedy?

A real world example that was told to me by a priest. A group was trying to get food to an area in Africa where the people were starving. However, they lacked trucks to haul the food. They called the CEO of a company and told him of their plight and that they needed 10 trucks. He wrote them a check. Now, based on the description that the priest gave us, I believe the check was probably written for somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000 to $1,000,000 for those ten trucks. Someone looking in could say that the person was being greedy hanging on to the $1,000,000 but not so.

To try to pass a law to fight greed sounds to me to be socialist. The government says “You have too much money, so we’re going to take it from you.”

Pax

 

[billsherman]

why we are willing to put one sin/moral judgment into law and why are not willing to put another sin/moral judgment into law?

Easy. Our society values money above everything else.

Don’t believe me?

We have monetized everything, even human life. How many threads on this very forum have condemned Covid measures because they interfere with the economy?

Everything in our society has a dollar sign attached to it, and its value to society is directly proportional to that amount (how do you know your job’s relative importance? The size of your salary, of course!).

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Because abortion is an event—with a beginning, middle and end, which is a dead preborn person.

Greed is an attitude of the heart, and no court in the land can change a heart.
However, some forms of greed are outlawed, such as stealing and embezzlement and fraud.

 

[Suudy]

We have monetized everything, even human life. How many threads on this very forum have condemned Covid measures because they interfere with the economy?

While the economic impact is real—people need resources to survive—so is the impact on freedom. It is the latter that I think most troubles people.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Because abortion is an event—with a beginning, middle and end, which is a dead preborn person.

Greed is an attitude of the heart, and no court in the land can change a heart.
However, some forms of greed are outlawed, such as stealing and embezzlement and fraud.

^^This.

If we’re going to criminalize “greed” then we would also be criminalizing attitudes/ vices such as “pride”, “selfishness”, and “sloth”. These vices are the motivations for criminal acts, not the criminal acts themselves. Greed could be the motivation for many acts that are criminalized, such as theft, robbery, embezzlement, fraud, murder, etc. In that sense, we have already criminalized greed once it reaches a level society would deem extreme, as shown by the fact that it caused someone to commit a criminal act.

An abortion is an act, not an attitude or vice. If one believes, as Catholics do, that life begins at conception, then abortion is murder, which has been criminalized pretty much since the beginning of human time.

 

[brown_bear]

There are countless laws that may not have been thought of as “anti-greed” but in fact they are.

Pay minimum wage to employees
Make them regular contracts
Ensuring safety at work
Give customers what you promised
Pay all taxes
Do not pollute the environment
Do not steal
Don’t kill your grandmother to inherit a billion dollars

And so on.
That’s all you can do.

Actually, you could have a billion and be good and generous, I could have $100 and be greedy and mean.

But no human law can do anything about this.

 

[Maximian]

Because it is not “sin” that is being prohibited by law, but the action of abortion. Greed is not an action but a thought.

In modern democracies it has not been normal to (to use Queen Elizabeth I’s phrase) “make a window into men’s souls “ and punish people for their thoughts.

However in recent years it is true that by classifying “hate” as a crime, the left hopes to go into this territory.

 

[whatistrue]

While the economic impact is real—people need resources to survive—so is the impact on freedom.

Which of your freedoms are being violated? Bearing in mind that it has been well established over many years that public officials have broad powers to take action to limit the spread of communicable diseases.

 

[Genesis315]

I would agree to laws that forbid certain “greedy” behaviors that are harmful to the common good. In fact, we already have many. As usual, it’s not an either/or, but an and/both.