AmericanPapist Comments
Is Obama really pro abortion? I mean he and his wife have had two kids... I think it's irresponsible for some to argue simply that if you're not outright against abortion, or the prospects there of that you're not pro-life. There are many in the world who though they don't agree with abortion don't believe they should impose on another human being's ability to committ a grave sin, but would rather give them an example and exhort them that there are other options such as adoption than terminating a human life. I wonder why people are so vehemenent when it comes to "complicity with abortion" as opposed to the other end of the spectrum, "complicity with capital punishment"?
Um, maybe because there's a moral distinction to be made between a convicted murderer, tried by his peers and found guilty of being a threat to society on the one hand, and a completely innocent child who has not committed a crime, not threatened anyone, and has not had due process prior to his or her execution ala abortion? Why are pro-abortion people so eager to release criminals and so eager to execute completely innocent babies? That's just creepy.
But even if they're serious with their claim that both a murderer and an unborn child have equal dignity and thus both ought to be treated the same as though there was no moral distinction between the evil and the good, there is the sheer numbers of abortions vs. capital punishment cases.
If one has to pick and choose which moral crisis to be outraged over, and any human life is just as valuable as another, then one must pick the routinue killing of 1.5 million human beings per year over the non-routine execution of a few dozen.
But here again, those who promote the 'seam-less garment' canard seem to pump far more emphasis and angst towards the dozen or so state executions of criminals and little or nothing towards the PRIVATE killing of untold millions of people who pose no danger to anyone.
How could we trust any politician with Presidential power if he or she is so morally tone deaf as to not see the glaring difference between the guilty and dangerous vs. the innocent and harmless?
To dove-tail with John's points: There is a logical and/or terminological difficulty with saying that one can be anti-abortion and yet, "pro-choice". The question to raise is why one believes that abortion is wrong. If abortion is not murder, than what is it? If you think that abortion is evil, but don't want to impose your opinion on others then you are equivocating on what you actually think abortion is. If it's really evil, then abortion is really 1st degree murder because all abortions require premeditative choosing. So, by saying that you don't think abortion is good, but allowing others to do it legally is ok, then the argument is that some kinds of 1st degree murder are not 1st degree murder. This is a bit like saying that bachelors are unmarried males who are neither male nor unmarried.
In essence, the position that "abortion is bad, but I can can't force my opinion on others" neither understands why abortion is evil, nor does it understand how choice actually functions. It doesn't make any sense to be "pro-choice" in this manner because it's a bit like saying: "I like liking things." You're throwing support behind something that no one disagrees with. We all like the fact that we have the ability to choose, and it is impossible to be human and not have the capacity for it. The important thing to talk about regarding choice is its content, what you choose, not the simple, boring fact that you can.
I suppose it's a bit of a negative to say that, even if we 'outlaw' it abortion is still going to happen. People in their finite madness/sinfulness (whatever you want to call it) will find ways of doing it. Does somehow overturning roe v. wade make us 'feel good' as catholics because we're 'saving a baby's life?' It's not saving a baby's life, shutting down an abortion clinic might cut back on abortions, but in the end that's not going to save the child's life from the woman who goes to the back ally with a hanger or to a seedy clinic in someone's garage.
I think as Catholics it's unhealthy and repugnat to obsess so much over the symbolism of roe v. wade without themselve supporting changes in the adoption laws, giving moneys to charities that help parentless children find homes, not adopting themselves etc etc.
Also I don't buy into the arguement that the life of a mass murderer is worth less than the potential of a baby. Without being s trite and disgusting but believing it none the less, I'd rather spare the criminal and allow him the opportunity to repent than to deny From God that which is of God.
Actually, the real reasoning is: "abortion is an acceptible form of premeditated murder because the unborn get in the way of unfettered sexual license whereas an incarcerated convict does not immediately threaten this maximum value around which all morality must orbit".
It's all about sex and the individual's supposed super-duper right to have as much as he/she/it desires without any restraint.
This is why no one must be restrained by threats of quarantine when the topic is sexually transmitted bugs, but there's a total "ho hum" attitude about forced quarantines when the bug is not sexually transmitted.
In a sane world, ANY deadly virus that is easily communicated by a carrier would lead to calls to personal and communal responsibility to avoid close contact between the infected and the undiseased. But then in our world, the right of the diseased to sex far outweighs the duties to others' health and safety because sex is the maximum right around which all society must spin.
No other area of life is granted the same august respect and circumspection on the liberal side; not national sovereignty, private property, free speech, freedom of association, and non-sexual 'privacy'. In those areas, many who claim to be 'pro-abortion' are happy to use the power of government to 'tell people what to do'.
They have no moral quibbles at all using brute force to MAKE their fellow Americans or others do things in the name of 'fairness' via taxation or confiscation of property.
From their speech codes to 'hate crime' legislation, they make it clear that they're totally OK with the government enforcing morality - so long as it's THEIR morality - the morality of the individualistic, materialist hedonist.
Thus our Bill of Rights seems to be 're-imaged' to give us the right to bread and circuses but nothing else. The First amendment thus is all about the right to porn but not to political speech 60 days before an election. Because, obviously, the right to sex is more vital to the republic than the right to affect political change.
And while the Second Amendment's interpretation is said to be totally obscure, the right to an abortion is raised from the penumbras as crystal clear and untouchable, because of course, the right to self-defense is nothing when compared to the right to unfettered sex.
The moral principle then of those who welcome abortion is that private murder is OK in the name of sex, whereas state executions of tried and convicted criminals or National defense use of deadly force against faraway enemies just doesn't have the same emotional and viceral weight. Criminals and terrorists simply don't threaten the maximum value of sex as much as a completely innocent unborn child does.
Censorship of political speech is fine - but don't you dare outlaw porn. Government intrusion in every aspect of life is fine, from womb to tomb, from attic to basement, but "stay out of my bedroom"!
Ah yes.... since there will always be abortion, we might as well legalize it, expand it, fund it, protect the doctors from prosecution, stubbornly refuse to regulate it, turn a blind eye to all the ravages it causes in women and men... what a wonderfully nonsense "argument". Seems to me there'll always be machine guns too. Funny how we made them highly difficult and expensive to legally purchase and viola, they remain rare.
Making things illegal never stops them entirely - but it does make them hard to obtain, thus reducing the damage.
Clue to clueless pro-abort Catholics, but the pro-life movement ALREADY puts our money and time where our mouth is by providing ALTERNATIVES to abortion. We'd really appreciate some help from those paying lip service to how much we "need" to do to make abortion 'rare'. In reality, most professional "Catholics" who are pro-abortion seem more jazzed up with stopping the Global war on terrorism than they are for REDUCING the direct private killing of completely innocent people called "abortion".
Because being "against the war" is easy. Helping a pregnant women keep her baby is tough.
Like the crowd, they call for Barabbas to be released to them while calling for the innocent to be crucified so that they will not need to be bothered with responsibility in their 'sex-lives'.
If we overturned Roe vs. Wade we WOULD save tens of thousands of children. 1.5 million women did NOT get 'back alley' abortions in 1972, and they wouldn't in 2010. So we can't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Roe's overturnign would have immediate effects for the good.
As a sudden concern for souls' salvation....The Axe murderer has plenty of time to repent on the way to the chair or execution room. The unborn don't even have the chance to be baptized.
And if you subscribe to the idea that "they'll go to heaven anyway" explain to me again why we need to care so much about people on death row - the unborn and murderers being "equal in dignity" and all? Again, it seems that modern 'ethics' seems to care alot more about the safety of the guilty than the protection of the innocent.
Thank you John for being more specific than me.
but the pro-life movement ALREADY puts our money and time where our mouth is by providing ALTERNATIVES to abortion. We'd really appreciate some help from those paying lip service to how much we "need" to do to make abortion 'rare'.
God bless those many pro-lifers who do put there money and time where their mouth is. Sadly, this is not where President Bush is by his own admission. The Administration was asked what program did the most to save unborn lives. When they answered, they were then asked (by a Democratic Congressman) why they were cutting that program. The Answer? "The budget is tight."
Typical.
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