The Anti-Life Equation
Posted on 23 January 2012
For those of you who have forgotten, or who were never aware, today is a national day of penance and prayer for the besetting sin of our nation, the atrocity called abortion.
In all the dioceses of the United States of America, January 22 (or January 23, when January 22 falls on a Sunday) shall be observed as a particular day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life. The Mass “For Peace and Justice” (no. 22 of the “Masses for Various Needs”) should be celebrated with violet vestments as an appropriate liturgical observance for this day. (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 373)
To date, of the genocides of the modern day, that of Belgium in the Congo is in fourth place, of Russia under Stalin third, American under Roe v Wade second, and China under Mao first place in terms of millions of innocent human beings slain. The exact number of tens of millions you may look up for yourself, dear reader: the soul so soon grows appalled and desolate at the contemplation of the astronomical numbers.
Jew or Muslim or Orthodox or Protestant of any denomination is asked to join in the effort. The evil is beyond human power to cure, any more than cocaine addiction can be cured by a stalwart effort of will by the addict. Once a society tastes the blood of babies, and develops a taste for that blood, the paramount psychological drive in the culture, the mainspring moving everything else, is the craving for denial and self-justification. Whatever needs to be sacrificed of lawfulness, honor, chastity, integrity, or trustworthiness is sacrificed to the cause of selfishness, self-righteousness, and gross intellectual dishonesty: as the success of Political Correctness no doubt testifies.
Any agnostics, skeptics, or atheists of good will who are contemptuous of the cult of the irrational strangling society in its sticky meshes are asked to reflect upon the sources of that irrationality. I submit that the suicidal does not affirm unreason over reason until after he affirms death over life. Anti-life produces anti-mind. Nothing happens for no reason, and the reason which would cause rational souls to embrace unreason must be potent indeed. What other than guilt over destroying one’s own offspring? What other than treason against hope and life and future and everything children represent? Unfortunately, my friendly atheists, you are of no use in the spiritual battle, where the real war takes place. What little gestures can be done on earth, however, will be appreciated and admired joyfully.
For those of you who are praying men, here are some prayers to begin:
A prayer for the unborn
O Heavenly Father, Creator and Giver of all life, Author of justice, Source of love and mercy: Although it is deserving of thine anger and punishment, look with mercy on our nation, which has offended thee by condoning the killing of millions of innocent children, thy precious sons and daughters, who, like all of us, were created in thine image and likeness, but whose only offense was their very existence. Amen.
A prayer for Right to Life
O heavenly Father, strengthen us against the mounting forces of anti-life; enlighten those who walk in this deadly way that they may see the enormity of their sin and return to the generous observance of the divine law. We pray, too, for mothers, that they may prize the great privilege of motherhood; and that they may bring up their children in the holy love and fear of God, thus saving their own immortal souls and furthering the honor and glory of their Maker. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Pray for us, St. Gerard, protector of the mother and her unborn child,
that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ!
~~ from “Prayers for Today,” published by Leaflet Missal Co.
Prayer for Life by Pope John Paul II
O Mary, bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life:
Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers
of babies to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely,
in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.
Thank you, Mr. Wright. Prayer and penance are greatly required.
Your comments directed toward our atheist brethren are particularly apt and close to home – while I have doubted God, crass enlightened self-interest has always seemed more than adequate for opposition to abortion. You do not want to grant to anyone to say who is and who is not a human being, because, sooner or later (sooner, if you’re any sort of troublemaker or inconvenience) that subtle tool will be used on YOU. You may not care a whit for babies or mothers and yet still, by cold hard political calculus, conclude that legally protecting human life at every stage is even more important than freedom of speech, habius corpus and all the rest in securing your own life and liberty.
Anti-abortion marches mirror the stories you’ve told regarding the intellectual aspects of your conversion – it would seem, to me at least, that there should be contingents of atheists and agnostics marching right along. But it seems it’s only the Christians and few other flavors of believers who stand up to be counted.
And this is not the only practical consideration not rooted in religious belief. The brutal irony of history suggests that, just as soon as their usefulness has been exhausted, the foot soldiers in this war to overturn the last vestiges of christian culture will, like Perillos of Athens, get to be on the receiving end of their handiwork. Their masters, both human and otherwise, are not ultimately concerned with the niceties of gay rights or women’s rights or anything other than power. For women, this is already happening.
There are atheists who oppose abortion. Nathanson opposed it for many years before he was baptized. Nat Hentoff still does.
I opposed abortion during my atheist days. It was as of the moment when I saw a sonogram picture of my son, and I was struck as with a lightningbolt with love for him, that I realized I lived in a society whose laws allowed me no legal recourse whatsoever to protect that child while he was helpless in the womb. I had been told he was not a child, not a human being at all, and not my concern, only the concern of my wife.
The true magnitude and cruel malignancy of the lies I had been told overwhelmed me. I was filled with rage and horror, the same as a man at a feast eating Soylent Green who discovers that he is chewing human flesh.
And, of course, the Ministry of Truth is doing all it can to suppress any news of the March for Life, which has occurred regularly for 30-odd years yet receives almost zero news coverage.
I saw coverage on this from the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and MSNBC — and those are generally liberal sites. That doesn’t seem like almost zero news coverage.
Forgive my hyperbole; it receives scant coverage (especially compared to some of the articles featuring other protests, rallies, marches, and so forth). The articles on the March for Life contained few interviews with marchers or much information on why they opposed abortion, euthanasia, etc., and characterized the rally as ‘anti-abortion’ rather than ‘pro-life’.
I have seen more coverage over the TSA detaining Rand Paul keeping him from going to the march then I have of the actual march.
May the Lord grant us a government that values freedom, justice, mercy and compassion – may abortion continue to be legal.
Let the Pharisees and the ignorant never make our medical decisions for us; may Your grace be with all those faced with difficult choices, and let us not add to their burdens but let us show them Your mercy and love.
Take from us spirits of self-righteousness and false piety, and let us not be quick to ascribe evil, bloodlust, and atrocities to others when our hearts are still full of hate.
“Take from us spirits of self-righteousness and false piety, and let us not be quick to ascribe evil, bloodlust, and atrocities to others when our hearts are still full of hate.”
Alas, you read my dark heart too well, sir. May sweet Jesus have mercy on us all.
Oh, I’m sorry, did you take that part as referring to you in particular? Now why would you do that?
Anyhow, feel free to disregard that part if you’d rather; you seem to be able to disregard a lot when it comes to any sort of nuance on this issue. Nevermind that the majority of abortions take place before there’s a heartbeat to listen to; nevermind that even if you consider abortion to be the taking of a life, there are plenty of times when that difficult choice must be made; and of course nevermind that using terms like “anti-life” and “tastes the blood of babies” are no way to convince anyone of the rationality or validity of your views.
(I’ve read your blog on-and-off for a while; I just finally got up the nerve to call it like I see it. There are pro-choice Christians, though you may True Scotsman them away, and even those who might be opposed to abortion personally do not always feel that government should be criminalizing the practice for those who find themselves in such an unfortunate circumstance as to be contemplating getting one.)
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you take that part as referring to you in particular? Now why would you do that?”
Because when I was cured of my blind atheism, the looking glass of the soul was no longer blank to me. I did no think I am the only son of Adam to whom that wise remark applies, but my fellow men must look to themselves to see if they see the specter of spiritual pride in their own faces.
Indeed! I do worry about spiritual pride for myself, as well – I often think far too little about the things I say. In general, my solution is to avoid making blog posts about how society is in need of massive penance for their incurable evil.
You must guard your own soul as you see it. Myself, since all I am doing is saying what my entire Church is saying, from the Pope down to the smallest altar boy in Patagonia, am in no such danger. It would be wrong and wicked of me to be silent while my fellow men slay more than ever Nazis or Aztecs slew.
And crime leads to crime: the guilt of it drives the perpetrators to adopt more outrageously false beliefs, and to defend the same, since logic is not available, with illogical, and to hate and loathe their forefathers since the example of any culture not sharing their guilt is hideous to them, and on and on it goes.
Euthanasia becomes just one more step, defended by the same arguments uttered by the same voice: and yet I know of two cases where people legally declared comatose and vegetative were able to move and speak clearly enough to beg for water while they were slowly and cruelly starved to death.
To will the end is to will the cause. If nothing but a society with no respect for human life can tolerate abortion, then to tolerate abortion is to tolerate a society with no respect for human life, and the elderly are no more human than “the clump of cells” which would otherwise grow into junior.
You are damned to Hell if you paper over crimes like that with soft words about hard decisions. In legal terminology, encouraging such crimes is aiding and abetting.
The doctors told me to kill my eldest son. I was an atheist at the time, and I actually contemplated the deed for an afternoon. You should not have done that to me. Oh, I know you did not literally, but you are one of the polluters in the spiritual atmosphere, who have poisoned the air. I breathed it in, I took it seriously.
It was not until I saw a picture of my son in my wife’s womb that I realized that you were a damned liar. Oh, no you personally, but you and yours and everyone else who contributes a drop of mental urine to the vast sea of moral sewage in which we now sink.
For that lie, and for that attempt on my son’s life, do not expect me to forgive you, not if you do not repent.
Also: I neither require, nor ask for, your forgiveness. And you do not speak for the Church – before Roe v. Wade, some of the strongest voices for legalizing abortion were Catholic, and someday I hope those voices win out. I myself attend Mass regularly and felt an appropriate amount of umbrage at the new English translation.
And I’m glad your son has such a loving father. I hope you remind him of how much you love him, often. Not all children are so fortunate.
Lastly, after being called (oh, not me personally!) various scum of the earth, I’m off. Here’s another person who’s going to resign your blog permanently to the “yeah, reading that was a waste of my time” folder. I’m sorry to have gotten you so riled up. *Shakes dust off feet*
“I myself attend Mass regularly and felt an appropriate amount of umbrage at the new English translation.”
Do you know, I’m beginning to sense a certain usefulness in the new Mass translation, and not just in its fidelity to the Latin or its recall of the first English translation.
I’m finding that those who turn their noses up at it, or take umbrage, also have a certain angle on other matters, from the smallest difference of opinion on where to situate the tabernacle to the largest doctrines that must be believed or else one is not a Christian.
Funny, that.
Growing among the wheat did not make tares wheat. Waiting for the bridegroom did not make all the virgins wise. Not everything taken up in the net was placed into containers; some were thrown away.
There is no use declaring that being a Catholic proves anything. Indeed, we have the Magisterium precisely so we may be guarded against such private judgements.
“The doctors told me to kill my eldest son. I was an atheist at the time, and I actually contemplated the deed for an afternoon. You should not have done that to me.”
THIS is the first evil of abortion.
THIS is what the culture of death is.
‘Abortion rights’ is a method of language assassination before anything else; you kill the meaning of ‘rights’ and ‘duties’, and a philosophy that seeks the good cannot be recovered. Remove the ability of men to philosophize, and you reduce man and all men to objects, and make vile all their effects. Teach a man that rights and duties are meaningless and he will admit that he is a paradox, and you will break his heart and he will unselfconsciously begin to hate his body and resent his will, and think of his seed as a fleck of trash, an accident no more worthy than he is. He will find it easy to imagine that the sons and daughters he fathers have no more life in his wife’s womb than a brick. He will destroy his child for the convenience, for the pleasure, of denying new life the ‘right’ to disrupt his sallow existence. You will destroy his virtue. Abortion destroys virtue.
Amen. One evil leads to another as naturally as sparks lead to fire. The conscience cannot tolerate to condemn itself, and so man who embrace evil on the moral level must embrace intellectual dishonesty on the mental level, and use false words and false ideas to convince himself, and then eventually accept whatever further falsehoods logically cohere with those first false ideas.
His main defense against total depravity in this case is to eschew logic, and steadfastly to refuse to think: which is what Postmodernism is, and what Political Correctness is.
It is mental noise, as banging pots and pans between one’s ears, to create hullabaloo to distract one’s one brain from reaching inevitable conclusions.
I am taken aback that you think calling infanticide what it is will deter the undecided from looking at the issue.
My argument against abortion has nothing to do with the heartbeat of the offspring: even before the heartbeat, junior is alive, is he not? The whole point of abortion is to stop the organism — you will not deny it is an organism, I trust — from being alive. The act of stopping a living thing from living is called killing. The organism in question is of the same species as its parents — that is a biological fact so plain that only an intellectual could deny it. (I mean, it has a sex as of the moment of conception, for it is either XX or XY. It is not logically possible that the organism have a sex but not have a species: that it be a male, but not be a man.) That species is human. Hence the killing of a human being without mitigation or justification with malice aforethought is murder.
But even if it were not murder, it is an omission of the parental duty of care. The duty of the parents to care for the young exists from the moment that some act of theirs or omission might deflect harm or bring it about, does it not? I have heard young virgins told not to smoke for fear of causing birth defects in children they may one day have, at a point in time when they have not yet met the father: if such advice is sound, the point in time at which the heart starts beating, or the point in time at which the offspring is ensouled or becomes “legally” a human being rather than a nigger or an untermenschen is of no consequence.
Yes, there are pro-abortion Christians of various heretical sects who have departed from the One True Church. There are Christians who believe Christ was not divine, and Christians who do not believe in the Trinity, and Christians who support Nazism and Communism.
I don’t give a rat’s ass what Christians believe. It is what Christ believes that matters.
“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
Now, if getting Mommy to snuff junior is not “offending a little one” then nothing is.
I was debating going and getting some sleep, but, well, there are people who are wrong on the internet!
But of course it’s true, it’s kinda pointless to be sitting here trying to change your mind. If I read you rightly, your arguments boil down to a) patronizing reassertion that abortion is murder, b) women exist to bear children, even before they may become pregnant, c) yep, I’m a heretic in your eyes, much as I thought I might be. Ah well.
I am content to let God sort this one out, both in terms of the spiritual state of your heart and mine, and also in terms of if/how women who have abortions are to be punished. Yes, I believe that what Christ says is the most important thing. But I, as you might have gathered, disagree with you that He’d be so quick to condemn every single woman who’s ever had an abortion to the fiery pits of hell, via millstones. And I’m all right with having a government that respects both the responsibilities of motherhood and the difficult circumstances that sometimes surround it. That’s all.
“b) women exist to bear children, even before they may become pregnant” Oh god. He did not say that; not even close. Good grief.
That it should be easier, cheaper and more convenient to end a pregnancy and kill a life, rather than to enable a parent to have a living wage or to support women who become pregnant and are told by their “betters” that it will end their lives and they will end up living on the streets begging scraps because their chances of an education are finished, their chances of getting a good job and having a career are finished, their chances of marriage are finished…
Oh, God forbid society should have to change like that! No, let more Kermit Gosnells flourish under the likes of the Philadelphia Department of Health, who winked at complaints from doctors and hospitals, when even the National Abortion Federation could not abide permitting him to become a member – all in the name of “service” and “choice” and to Hell with the girls he infected and the woman he killed!
Protip: addressing the actual argument someone made is the best way to sway them to your side.
No, my argument is (1) murder is the unlawful killing of a human being (2) the offspring of a human being must be a member of the same species as its parent (3) bringing and end to the life of the offspring is killing it.
As far as I can tell, the point here in dispute is (2). You might want to make a distinction between the legal definition of a human being and a biological definition, but as far as logic is concerned, an object cannot have the properties of a set without being a member of the set (the example I used was the sex of the organism — nothing is male or female without being a male or female something: there is no such thing as a female fox who is not a fox.)
I argue in the alternate that even were the offspring of a human being not a human being, that the duty of parents to care for their children vests at the point in time where a chain of cause and effect can be set in motion which will eventually cause weal or woe to the child, and this is true before the child himself exists: it is for this reason that it is morally wrong deliberately to induce birth defects in a child, and logically this must be true even before the child is born, because that is when birth defects occur.
And in this case, I do speak for the Church, because I am repeating what the Church teaches.
“am content to let God sort this one out, both in terms of the spiritual state of your heart and mine, and also in terms of if/how women who have abortions are to be punished…”
Were I like you, an advocate of the slaughter of the innocents, I would more worried about my own punishment.
John, you’re wasting your time bringing logic or morality to this argument. You are trying to delineate a religious point of view; zaoelpis is only interested in calling you a fart and a meany.
loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self= supercilious solipsism
I thought his words merited an honest response, no matter what his personal motives were. Naturally, I don’t have any interest in his reviling as such, but only if there is some thought behind the ire worth engaging.
I felt it important to clarify at least one thing: the “umbrage” comment was a joke – I have no real issue with the new translation or any placement of tabernacles. I knew I should have added a smiley-face like this one. :-p
Also for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that, while getting an abortion is an excommunicable offense, being pro-choice is not. As much as you or I might not like to contemplate it, we may all find ourselves having to spend eternity together, which is part of why I came back after all.
The other part is that I wanted to express my complete agreement with deiseach – let’s improve the lives of women to the point where none even contemplates an abortion, ever. The thought would never even cross a woman’s mind. That is a worthy goal. I find it salient that in countries with decent access to healthcare and legal abortion, abortion is actually less common than in countries in which it is outlawed, and as a side-benefit, fewer women die. So perhaps, just from a policy point of view, we should apply those lessons here in the States, with the goal (that I share) of preventing abortions, but going about it by addressing the root causes such as poverty, health concerns, rape, or incest.
I think the main disagreement between Mr. Wright and I is over the point at which killing alive, human, cells becomes murder in the first degree, a sub-topic of which is the point at which a moral opposition to abortion becomes a rationale for adding criminal punishments (and spiritual punishments, apparently) on top of already difficult situations. On the first point, you’re right that you’re in agreement with the official Church position when it comes to the biology of it – life begins at conception – though of course that is a bit new (see also: “quickening”). But murder requires motive, as well, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find women possessing evil and malice towards their potential children justifying a murder conviction. Is abortion tragic? Definitely. I’d lean towards a manslaughter charge, at worst, though, and some cases might even fall under self-defense justifications (in cases where the life of the mother is at stake, for instance). Sure, the mental image of being attacked by a baby is kinda funny – but it’s less so when you consider the number of deaths in childbirth even for mothers who start out in pretty good shape.
And on the second point, obviously there are complications that arise when Church teaching crosses into civil law. Are miscarriages felonies? How many years in prison would using birth-control get you, or would it be the chair? Are rape victims who take Plan B to be treated as murderers (good luck, by the way, producing the body, if indeed fertilization had taken place at all)? Of course, I know John and I are privileged in never having to make a choice like that about a baby we were personally carrying. But that is kinda the point: if a woman is to be held responsible (she’s the “responsible party” I mentioned, not me) for the health and well-being of her baby, you should trust her with the difficult decision of whether or not to have the baby in the first place. And if you, the government, or the Church, find yourselves unable to pardon a woman, who, facing a similar choice to your own, John, though perhaps with a less supportive spouse, made the opposite decision to the one you did… well, I guess that’s why I’m happier leaving her in Jesus’ hands.
(For what it’s worth, abortion is pardonable by a bishop, I gather. So some of those poor women may also be joining us on the celestial shores after all – let’s try to make it a good fraction of them, eh?)
We have no difficulty holding women responsible for the welfare of their born children without letting them off the children because they don’t want to have them. We have entire organizations dedicated to dealing with the women (and men) who can’t be trusted with their own children.
“you should trust her with the difficult decision of whether or not to have the baby in the first place.”
We did. People are not, as a rule, forced to have sex. It was their choice. They could have gotten their tubes tied. Their choice. Many choices go into having a baby. You are treating women with contempt, it seems to me, because you do not trust them with the difficult decision of whether or not to have a baby. Instead, you treat them like children, to be given endless “do overs”. And your soft bigotry of low expectations is quite cruel. To the mother who murdered her child, to the couple who want to adopt. So cruel to the mother. We have heard from Jane Doe, and she does not thank you.
“I think the main disagreement between Mr. Wright and I is over the point at which killing niggers becomes murder in the first degree, a sub-topic of which is the point at which a moral opposition to abortion becomes a rationale for adding criminal punishments (and spiritual punishments, apparently) on top of already difficult situations.”
First, one must dehumanize the victim in speech before treating them inhumanly.
But even if the clump of cells which happen to have the properties of being alive and being mommy’s little baby are not human in some mystical way, but are merely human in the biological sense, the argument is that parents may not neglect or abuse their children. In law, nothing in the act of neglect or negligence requires it take place after the victim is born. If I stack boxes in an unsafe fashion in 1903, and they fall upon the one-year-old plaintiff in 1906, it is no defense for me to claim the boxes were stacked before the plaintiff was born. Likewise, doing an act which harms the baby-to-be is still neglect and abuse of the parental duty before the baby’s birth. It is for this reason it is immortal for a mother deliberately to expose herself to chemicals which cause birth defects in the hope of causing a birth defect. If purposefully inducing a birth defect is wrong, then purposefully inducing abortion, which is mere a birth defect that his fatal, is also wrong. This argument does not depend on declaring the baby legally human.
And, no. My disagreement with you is that you spit in the face of Christ by defying the teachings of His Church on earth.
My disagreement with you is personal: you are one of the crowd that created and contributed to the moral atmosphere where a doctor tempted me to kill my firstborn son. I cannot forgive myself for having listened to that doctor as if his advocacy were something other than attempted child-murder.
I can, however, not repeat the mistake by dignifying the gross evil you advocate with any sign of courtesy or respect.
Son of a viper, how do you expect to escape damnation?
Through the blood of Jesus, same as you.
And seriously, you’re down to implying I’m a racist and calling me a heretic again? I’m kinda surprised you didn’t just go the full Godwin’s Law on me.
I was hoping that your own personal experience would make you more compassionate towards someone in a similar situation, not less. But what proceeds from your mouth (and fingers) is just more hatred and darkness, showing the contents of your heart. It is you who dehumanize others; if we met in a dark alley I fear it sounds like you would be the one to emerge with blood on your hands. Justify it all you like, but it is *your* attitude towards life that is caustic and un-Christlike.
Stop pretending the babe in the womb is not your brother. Stop pretending that the babe in the womb is not the image and likeness of God. Obey the Church. Listen to your conscience.
Do you have any children? Have you ever had perfect strangers ask your wife if they could put a hand on her belly and feel the baby kick, a look on their face of joy and awe, because they know they are in the presence of a miracle?
No stranger every asked my wife if they could feel the “fetus” kick.
Vermin like you call babies “fetuses” for the same reason racists call Negroes “niggers” — to dehumanize them. To make them seem less real to you so that your conscience will slumber.
If you expect the forgiveness of Christ, repent of your sin.
No, it is YOU who is the one who is un-Christlike!
Seriously, though, you really can’t tell the difference between a rebuke and a threat?
That you chose this topic to jest in speaks more than you seem to realize.
It did. Having suffered as he did as a consequence of the temptation, he wishes to ward off such temptations from those in a similar situation, which is the compassionate thing. Just as it is the compassionate thing to warn people off a sector when you know there is a man-eating bear in it.
You, OTOH, think that encouraging people to choose to that sector is compassionate.
Says the one with blood rising up to his knees.
Which Christ are we talking about here? The one who called Pharisees white-washed tombs full of corruption and bodily threw the money-lenders out of the temple?
Ah, but the point is not that a big thing causes a little thing, but a little thing a bigger. That the sensitive creature of its own accord becomes a rational creature is the point at issue. Since you must posit that some effect makes this happen in a closed system, I am curious to hear both when and how. Otherwise, we have no reason to multiply entities.
I will do you the credit of believing you know infanticide to be wrong, and that the scissors which cut the umbilical cord do not make you a person, and that technology cannot, either — “viability” is out the window. You are a person or you are not whether or not your mother’s womb is in the jungle or the ICU. External human consensus does not make you a person, either, otherwise we, the messageboards of John C. Wright’s blog, could vote you to a swift death. I will do you the credit of presuming you do not advocate for third trimester abortion. We are left somewhere within the first two trimesters.
Please articulate clearly at which point in the first two trimesters a non-person becomes a person.
—
The Church’s position is that the point life is discernible is the point that direct, willed, conscious abortion is necessarily murder. That we recognize conception rather than quickening is a red herring — quickening was simply the point we first perceived the child to be alive. Modern technology reveals that cell division, and inarguably unique inarguably human inarguable life, begins right at conception. This amounts not to a change of a major premise but the adjustment of a minor premise to fit reality.
“But murder requires motive, as well, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find women possessing evil and malice towards their potential children justifying a murder conviction.”
This is stupid. A woman who destroys her living child in the womb because of X can only do so for one of two reasons: coercion or malice.
The alternative is that she destroys her daughter out of GOODWILL for her.
The child is not, in any sense, being destroyed accidentally or coincidentally – the decision to abort is to make a living thing die, and the procedure a means to secure the end.
The degree to which the abortion culture is COERCIVE is one issue. But malice is a pre-requisite to destroying your child, as much as malice is alive in the banalities and venal sins that occupy the rest of us continually.
Then,
Malice is a legal term. Killing your child because you don’t feel ready to have a child, or because you conceived the child in hopes of coercing the father to marry you and he took off, fills the legal definition — just as walking down the hallway of an apartment building shooting through the door suffices as “malice” to say that you murdered anyone you struck and killed with those bullets, including the unborn baby of a pregnant woman you shot, which example I am in fact lifting from a legal judgment by a court right here in this country.
Addressing some commenters in no particular order:
My apologies, CPE – I’d previously missed the part in the blog’s TOS in which I put myself under the spiritual authority of Mr. Wright when I commented. :-p Though would you fault a man for killing someone who he thought was threatening his children? Which apparently John does think of me – and of course it wouldn’t just be me, but quite a number of pro-choice people… I’m actually kind of surprised he hasn’t already gone on some sort of spree, instead of just writing impotent blog-posts. Because of course if being pro-choice were actually equivalent to a mass homicide, action might be justified; but then again perhaps that’s not actually what’s going on in this country. I’m sure Jesus would say, “I was thirsty” and John’d be all, “I wrote a vicious blog-post on that very subject!”
And Mary, just remember the targets of Jesus’ wrath, and recall that they mainly included the self-righteous folks who distanced themselves from society (and especially the needy) because of how evil they presumed them to be. Hate is also a form of murder.
To John – argument by repeated assertion is not really that convincing. Nor are the conspicuous uses of True Scotsman, and of course the ever-present Straw Men, whatever their skin color. Asking me to repent, or rebuking me, are somewhat silly tactics as well, when we have such a fundamental disagreement – I could as easily ask you to repent (and I have already rebuked you for your pride), and you’ve shrugged me off just as I shrug you off, and for the same reason: I do not think you’re in the right!
For what it’s worth, The Ubiquitous, since you brought up a well-framed argument – it’s Proposition #1. Although there should be some specific name for the logical fallacy of argument via philosopher name-dropping, haha. As a scientist I am big on cause-and-effect when studying creation but I am also well-aware that big things have little causes all the time. One should not equate little and big, nor should one mix up causes and effects, reactants and products. And seeing a great effect from a seemingly small cause does not prove God’s hand, nor necessarily even prove any external – a nuclear chain-reaction is a very understandable (and big!) event, but the lump of uranium required is very unassuming. To switch to a somewhat clearer analogy, an oak is not an acorn, nor an acorn an oak. It’s a potential oak tree, sure. But your third proposition, too, relies heavily on the assumption that a blastocyst is more than just a “potential” human.
I would be exceptionally naïve (almost as naïve as that guy who said no one was ever forced to have sex!) if I thought at this point that I would actually convince any of you of anything, of course. I am a poisoned well in addition to a son of a viper, and obviously I’m just out to murder all your children. I really have no idea how you love your neighbors at all when any one of them might be an Anti-Lifer. I, for my part, wish you well, and sincerely hope you don’t actually kill anyone, born or unborn.
“Nor are the conspicuous uses of True Scotsman ….”
I have never once accused you of being not a Christian. I said nothing that could be interpreted to mean this.
You are merely reciting rote responses to accusations and arguments not being made. I accused you of aiding and abetting child-murder by your words at least, and defying Church teachings as old as the Church herself.
Exactly – no real Christian (by definition) would defy the Church on this matter, of course. No real Christian could support pro-choice legislation, right? But it is a bad argument, because I can, and I do, etc.
By the way, I agree with you that Jesus wouldn’t support child murder. And neither do I. You say I do, because that’s how you see it. And I respect that. And I respectfully disagree that abortion is in all cases murder, as I’ve said.
“Exactly – no real Christian (by definition) would defy the Church on this matter, of course. No real Christian could support pro-choice legislation, right? But it is a bad argument, because….”
I have never once accused you of being not a Christian. I said nothing that could be interpreted to mean this.
You are merely reciting rote responses to accusations and arguments not being made.
This is now the second time I have repeated this. Since I just got done with a very nauseating exchange of letters where my correspondent did nothing but accuse me of saying something I never said or implied, I am more impatient with this particular boneheaded rhetorical trick than I should be. Rather than go through that again, I will simply ask you to either repeat back to me exactly where I said you were not a Christian.
Just back up your accusation with a quote. Everything here is written down.
If you are making the argument that being pro-abort does not defy Church teachings, that is a different argument. If you are saying that by saying that you defy Church teachings I am calling you not a Christian, then you are equating two unrelated concepts: heretics are Christian, and so are sinners, and so are excommunicates. The only person I here called a non-Christian was my Mormon friend, who grew understandably irate at the suggestion.
Are you a Catholic?
As if your own comments did not ooze with self-righteousness. Insinuitions about distancing from the needy are merely ad hominem, especially when all you urge offering is the death of their children.
Whereas you get to say, “I wrote mean-spirited comments urging that they let you die of thrist — it was the Christ-like thing to do and anyone who objects also objects to freedom, justice, mercy and compassion.”
Are you a Catholic, by any chance? You mentioned going to Mass. If so, you do not have the liberty of conscience to make up your own mind on this matter and remain in communion. Rome has spoken.
If you are Protestant or Orthodox, do you have a Church authority in your denomination? What do the teachers you trust on all other matters say Christ wants?
“Must be made”? By what criterion are you judging?
If you are speaking truthfully, that abortion is not objectively wrong, one of the following three propositions must be wrong:
- A cause cannot have an effect greater than itself, i.e. an entity may not spontaneously become something greater than it was without some stimulus external to itself.
- Rational animals like man, discernibly different and greater than sensitive creatures like beasts, must be treated as priceless ends rather than disposable means.
- All human entities innocent of grave crime, as children-in-the-womb surely are, are entitled to the same right to life.
Show us publicly, and refute, of your choice, Parmenides or Kant or Locke. Refute whoever you do at the point where he is at his respective truest.
If abortion is wrong, it is gravely wrong and objectively wrong. Our only question left, for culpability is not ours to calculate, is what we can do for all the victims involved.
“medical decisions”
Pah.
Yep! It turns out that plenty of medical decisions are a matter of life or death – choosing to have almost any surgery can go there, not to mention decisions on whether or not to be resuscitated. And of course, for those who are unable to decide for themselves, it does fall to another responsible individual to make the choice for them, weighing all the factors to determine what would be the kindest and best.
Choosing to have surgery is a matter of life and death for yourself. Abortion is choosing death for someone else, and your own child to boot. And if you’re suggesting that people have abortions because they think it is the kindest and best thing for THE ABORTED CHILD then that is absurd.
“it does fall to another responsible individual to make the choice for them”
Never mind what you might want, citizen; you are not a Responsible Individual under the terms of the Act. The designated Ethicist will decide if you are eligible for treatment or not (where “treatment” is used to mean “giving food and water”).
May God preserve you, zaoelpis, from falling into the hands of “Responsible Individuals” (and I speak as a citizen of a state with nationalised healthcare, so I don’t have any bees in my bonnet about creeping socialism or whatever other frenzies you would like to attribute to me).
If you were the only possible organ donor for me, whether you consent to donate is a matter of life and death to me. That doesn’t mean I get to forcibly chop you open. It would go double if it would kill you and was not needed to save my life.
He says, having no respect for our difficult choices in speaking. And not realizing that rebuking the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy.
As for “evil, bloodlust, and atrocities”, the blood and dismembered children make the matters perfectly clear. If you think we should nevertheless be silent — why on earth did you speak? Why does John’s post cry aloud to be rebuked when the slaughter is going on and should not be rebuked?
thank you for giving me words to say tonight here, on my knees. Also…today is a good day….my husband granted me my wish to have my three boys baptized in the Lutheran Church.
May the water wash their mortality away, dear lady.
…and may God grant that the graces poured out upon them may provide healing and blessings to those around them.
Now that the unhappy, needed day is over for the year, and I can be a little flippant about something, the issue does really seem to be the Anti-Life Equation of Darkseid fame. Just now it has given us a Catholic who gives us a wonderful quote about hate in one’s heart, who ends up mocking himself as he storms off, “I’m off. Here’s another person who’s going to resign your blog permanently”. So much for “Take from us spirits of self-righteousness and false piety, and let us not be quick to ascribe evil, bloodlust, and atrocities to others when our hearts are still full of hate.”….. It has given us a Libertarian, someone who’s creed (I thought) is that Life and Liberty are the highest goods, who quotes Jefferson Davis, the leader of the only “country” founded on the principle that Slavery is right. It has given us an Objectivist, someone who believes (I thought) that the great crimes come from saying and acting as if A does not equal A, telling us that A = A is conditional when it comes to Abortion, telling us that saying A = A is something we should back off of, because the truth is bad PR, and paraphrasing Stalin (Not deliberately I’m sure) in his attempt to downplay the millions murdered in this very modern Holocaust.
And all of these people would seem to be men. They have all sold their Souls, betrayed their highest ideals, so that someone else can murder a child? Anti-Life Equation indeed!
You know, while I happen to know the Catholic argument against abortion, it relies on all these dogmatic propositions about the sanctity of human life, that we are all made in the image of God. Pshaw. Who believes that?
I hear from Catholics far more often the case from reason against abortion, which invokes neither God or His bride the Church nor any article of faith but that man can to some degree know the truth. And it is this case which is derided as being out of touch and dogmatic and invoking God. In my experience, it is not reason but, by and large with a few exceptions, hate which inflames the supporters of abortion. The rest of the abortion supporters, if not spoonfed lies and distortions — that pro-life organizations are clinic-bombing, abortionist murdering, rage-filled hypocrites — have master’s degrees in tedious Boomer rhetoric.